12th letter
Tues. 10/17/06
So being home has been much better with lots more sleep than in the hospital! We picked up my mom last Friday night from our small Misawa city airport and it’s been great having her here. She lets me get lots of sleep and has been helping out a ton. She sleeps in Brock’s room on a queen bed that we brought. The bed and the crib fit in the room and we put the changing table in with our kitchen table. So everything fits ok. I was just glad she could sleep on something decent for 2 ½ weeks. Bryan went back to work last Thursday, just in time for the next Exercise, so his schedule is 5am-5pm and included last Saturday. He was able to leave work for 6 hrs last Thursday and a few hours on Friday for some appointments we had for Brock, so that was nice. Last Friday was Brock’s 2-wk appt (he will be 3 weeks old tomorrow), and he was almost 21 inches long and 9 pounds 2 ounces (remember he was 7 lbs. 14 oz. and 19 ½ in. when born) – so he has definitely grown! The last 3 days or so he has been eating every 4 hours or so, so that has been really nice! – but the last 24 hours he’s been on his own schedule so hopefully we can get back to the trend we thought he was starting. But he’s obviously getting enough to eat! He’s in the 50th percentile for height and weight and his head was normal size too. We think his ears are bigger than normal….but they didn’t measure those – haha. More and more people are saying he looks like Bryan but I can’t really tell who he looks like quite yet. We’ve been able to go hang out with others 2 different nights so we can now even make it out of the house with him okay - haha. But I bring a bottle because I can’t quite do the breastfeeding thing in public yet; but that is going good too – what a relief. He sleeps a lot of course and doesn’t really have fussy times. We started him on the pacifier and he does pretty well with that, or so my mom says. She keeps saying how surprised she is at how good a baby he is, so we have been blessed with this first one!! Man we love him to death! I guess I’m getting used to the fact that I’m a mom and he’s mine and that this isn’t just a temporary thing. My mom and I went to a baby shower last Saturday for a friend of mine who is due Oct. 31st, and it is kind of weird to see her how we once both were. It is nice to be able to bend over again. She is jealous because I never got any stretch marks – yay! More weight has come off so that’s really nice that so much has dropped without really having to do anything – I guess I did retain a lot of water at the end – I just thought my legs were actually getting fat. The chubs above the c-section scar are just kind of interesting. But what can I say, it hasn’t even been 3 weeks – soon I’ll be able to exercise. Anyway, enough about that.
It’s getting colder here – the temperature’s in the high 50’s and 60’s, and it’s been raining quite a bit. Our beach on base got flooded because it rained non-stop for over 48 hours.
Naomi asked how motherhood was going… I think my friend Rachel put it well: “exhausting, overwhelming, fulfilling, confidence building... wonderful.” Rachel asked if now I will have to have a c-section with all the rest of my deliveries, and I don’t know actually. They never really talked to me about that afterwards. I will ask about that at my 6-wk appt I guess.
So, it seems like it’s hard to get a lot of things done in one day, that’s for sure; and to get enough sleep for the night, your day starts pretty late. But we are trucking along and getting used to it, and once my mom leaves there are a lot of people here who are always willing to help. The friends we have made here are awesome and so good about checking up on us and seeing if we need anything – we love them! We love Brock and this crazy experience. He can focus on us now and just stares at our faces sometimes. Bryan loves to do “tummy time” with him to strengthen his little muscles and he is such a good dad!! He does so much for me and our little family and I couldn’t ask for a better husband! So between having the best husband ever, the best little baby ever, and the best mom ever, I am doing great! We are definitely enjoying our time with little Brock Taylor.
Hope all are doing well and we love you all!
Julie, Bryan, and Brock Blumenkrantz
To view the pictures not posted click on the link and then on the picture to see the slideshow: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2t7pqtrs.2vh4f43c&x=0&y=-5xo2hq&localeid=en_US
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Brock at home
10/3/06 - First night home! The crib looks so big!
10/4/06 - 1 week old! Dad takes a break from homework...
10/12/06 - oops!-I messed up the snaps!
2 weeks old! Today was his actual due date. He looks kinda scrawny and awkward...
And it's the weirdest thing that his hair always looks red in pictures!
Friday, October 6, 2006
10/6/06 - 11th Letter
A long one!!
11th letter
Fri. 10/6/06
**Bryan read through this afterwards and added his own commentary which is the smaller, blue font.**
I finally have some time to sit down and write down my story. WE HAVE A KID!!!! For those of you who don’t know, which is everyone besides immediate family and whoever they told, Brock is now 9 days old. Yes that’s right; he was born Wednesday, September 27th at 9:30am – over 2 weeks before his due date of October 12th. But of course, I was induced, so that makes it a little different. So I will start at the beginning – it will be extremely detailed because I’m writing this for me pretty much. On Friday, Sept. 22nd I had my 37-wk OB appt (info for later). That night as Bryan was getting out of the shower right before we were going to bed (midnight), I, on sort of a whim I suppose, called Labor and Delivery to ask about my swollen legs and feet (because they remained swollen – there was no change when I got up in the morning). I knew that something like that happens all the time to pregnant people, but for some reason I just wanted to check to see what they had to say about it (never called them before with any problems). They said normally they’re worried about swelling in the hands and face, and that the legs and feet are expected. But they asked if I had had headaches and I said yes, realizing that I had had a constant headache for about the last 4 days (not a bad one, just a nuisance). They asked if my blood pressure was high and I said yes, since I had just had my OB appt earlier that day I knew this. I forgot what the bottom number had been but the top (systolic?) was in the 130’s when it’s normally between 100 and 110. They told me to come in and they would check a few things. So Bryan wasn’t too happy (not true, I was just tired) that I had called and asked if I really wanted to go in and I told him I had given them my name and everything so they were expecting me now. I offered to go by myself but he came with me (cuz I’m awesome). I thought we would just be there for like 10 minutes. We ended up leaving the hospital at 3:30am. What they did was have me lay down on a bed and over a long course of time periodically measured my blood pressure, heart rate, and contractions. I think at that time I hit around 140/90. They had me do a urine test and they took my blood, so we had to wait for the results of that while we were there as well. While waiting and continuing to be monitored I had a few contractions that for the first time were really very uncomfortable; so the nurse decided to check me and said I was 1cm dilated and 80% effaced. Finally we found out that the urine and blood tests had come back normal, but still the nurse was convinced that I had the beginnings of “preeclampsia” (where I guess blood flow to the baby ends up getting cut off and the mother is prone to seizures – and they don’t know what causes it), and I was to now do a 24-hr urine test, and she told me I needed to take it easy and do nothing except to eat and take showers (!) – (I didn’t listen because I was convinced nothing was wrong with me since the tests had come back normal and that she was over-concerned). [The next day – Saturday the 23rd – was my baby shower that the girl I met on the plane ride here threw for me, and tons of people came and I got loads of stuff! It was great!]. So from Sunday morning to Monday morning I saved all the ‘ol urine (gross!) and turned it in Monday morning (Sept. 25th) to the lab. Tuesday morning (the 26th) a nurse called Bryan and told him they couldn’t get a hold of me and that he “needed to find his wife and have her call them.” This made Bryan pretty mad and he called me and this time around I answered the phone (I didn’t the first 2 times and I guess that was the nurse). He wanted me to wait 20 minutes before I called her back because he felt she was so rude to him. (She was! I thought they just wanted to confirm some appointment and it seemed like she wanted me to put everything on hold to do her job of letting my wife know). I knew right away something must not have been right with my urine test, otherwise they wouldn’t be calling. Well that didn’t even cross Bryan’s mind and he thought they were calling to remind me of an appt that I had or something. Funny boy. Like they’d be that urgent for that. Silly. I called her back, it was 10am now, and she told me that I had higher levels of protein in my urine than I should have, reiterated that I should be taking it easy, and asked when I could come in that day for a “non-stress test.” (Julie thought she said anal stress test so she was kind of worried). I just wanted to put it off and I told her 2pm even though Bryan had been coming home from his training class at like 10am (he worked barely any hours in September while in this class, it was awesome – seriously sometimes only an hour and a half a day!). I had pre-planned to have this day devoted to doing homework because I had a test to take that night in one of my online UVSC classes and I hadn’t started any of the reading or homework for this first section. But instead of doing homework until 2 I felt for some reason other things were more important at this time and I packed the hospital bag you pack when you go in to have a baby. I cleaned up the baby room a bit and got things out of the way and the home was pretty much decent except for the mess in the living room from all the stuff I got at the baby shower that I hadn’t had a chance to put away yet. Because Monday I felt it was important to go shopping for food and for some baby things that we didn’t have and to get some other things done; Saturday night I was preparing the talk I gave in Sacrament meeting at church on Sunday, and Sunday night we spent eating dinner with the clan at Josh and Melissa’s house. So Bryan was home way before 2 of course and wanted to go early but I didn’t want to because I guess I just felt like I wouldn’t be leaving once I got there, and I wanted time to go pick up the rocker/recliner for the baby room from the furniture store. So we get there at 2 and I once again get hooked up to have my blood pressure monitored. This time it was consistently higher, and I think the highest I hit was 155/100. After about 45 minutes of it being high and not going back down (Friday night it ended up going a little down), they went to go show the doctor the results. They came back and said they had “good news/bad news: however I wanted to take it.” -That they were keeping me. I changed into a gown and they started an IV for magnesium which I guess is a muscle-relaxant to prevent me from having seizures. At this point I told Bryan that I was scared to death….. The doctor came in and checked me and I was still the same 1cm dilated and 80% effaced, so she manually (with her dang fingers) made me 2cm dilated, which was painful. She then put in the balloon thing (“bolus” I think it’s called-?), that would help me dilate to a 4 or 5. The nurses came back in and put in a catheter – which was interesting – but the most painful part was after it was already in – I constantly felt I had to go to the bathroom so bad that it hurt – very very uncomfortable. I told them from the get-go that I already knew I was going to want an epidural because I’m a wuss. They said to let them know when I wanted it and I mentioned that at my anesthesia appt they told me I had to wait until I was 4cm dilated. The nurse/doctor said it didn’t matter and if it hurt, it hurt, and I could get it whenever I wanted to. So I said ok, sure, I want it now. The contractions were already hurting but nowhere near unbearable, but the catheter was really really irritating and knowing that this balloon inside me was going to rapidly make me a 4…. but more so I wanted it because they were starting Pitocin (labor-inducer) into the IV and I’ve heard the horror stories of the contractions that come good, hard, and fast with that, and if I could, hey, why not avoid that. So they called in the anesthesiologist, who apparently had already worked all day and was already at home, and had to work the next day as well. So she finally came and it wasn’t all that bad at all, but I was definitely hurting a little more by then. The relief was freaking awesome and I could no longer feel the catheter – hallelujah. We go to church with one of the techs – Skylar - and he called the branch president – Shayne Stokes - to let him know I was in labor, because Stokes is one of the 2 pediatricians. (Skylar is the one who told us that a normal level of protein in one’s urine is between 50 and 250 and that mine had been 840. So after coming in and having high blood pressures once again, it was definitely confirmed that I had the infamous preeclampsia, and the only way to escape it is to deliver). Stokes came in and saw me and asked what he could do for us and he called the friends we were supposed to meet for dinner that night to let them know we definitely weren’t going to be able to make it. So that was really nice of him. So 3 of the girls came in and saw me and the word spread from there – I was in a happy-go-lucky mood due to the awesomeness of the epidural. Well as the night wore on the epidural was slowly wearing off so the anesthesiologist –Tori - came back in and adjusted the dosage (she was just resting in one of the other rooms…at my beckon call I guess!). The doctor had also come back in and the bolus came out with just a small tug so now I was further dilated. As the night wore on I did not further dilate. The nurse attending to me that shift (6pm-6am) said that my body was trying to catch up to what the bolus forced my uterus to do. So as it got later and later Bryan tried to find a comfortable sleeping position in one of the chair recliners and couldn’t really. (the chair sucked) And I slept maybe 20 minutes that night. The feelings of the contractions started coming back again but just on the right side, even though I was laying on that side (I couldn’t lay on my back because it made my blood pressure much worse than when I was on my sides) so the medicine should have technically worn off on the left first but it was always the right. After Tori tried to make dosage adjustments previously for this problem and it continuing, she knew she was going to have to redo the epidural so that when I was delivering I wouldn’t only be numb on one side and feel everything on the other. It was the middle of the night now, and I knew that she had woken up to come do this. I tried to wait to have someone get her until I no longer wanted the pain to get any worse, to avoid having to wake her all the time. (Just like Julie. Even in the worst pain ever, she doesn’t want to bother someone else or make them go out of their way to help her. I figured this was the time and place to make someone go out of their way to take care of her especially if that was her job). So it was re-done, a little higher than the first, and the pain subsided once again. Since I was not progressing past 5cm-dilated, they decided to monitor my contractions from inside the placenta by putting the little monitor way up inside me, so they would get an accurate measurement of the severity of the contractions (I guess the monitor on the outside measures them but is not accurate on how big they are). (I always thought that something comes out during the birth process not the other way around). Once it was inside me it showed a little bit smaller contractions than previously. It continued on and on like this. As it started to turn into the early morning hours they checked me again and surprise surprise I was 8cm and 90% effaced. I started to feel the pressure on my pelvic bone and that really was not comfortable and once again started to feel contractions so Tori was called in once again. She adjusted dosage and the pain went away but the pelvic pressure would not and she said there was nothing else she could do. (bologna) The nurse told me that they do not use as dense of a mixture here for their epidurals as where she had come from in the states (she’s only here for 8 months), and thus all pain was not gone during the final stages of delivery/labor. Tori (anesthesiologist) said that all of the nerves could not be numbed in the birth canal or something like that. So that was that. At this point the Pitocin level was extremely high so I was grateful I could not feel it. The morning wore on and the nurses had their shift change (which I was sad about because my nurse was AWESOME). The contractions had been starting to hurt again and just after 6am really started to get more intense. Then I swear I was dying. I felt every bit of it and there was no relief between contractions. My epidural was completely gone. They were coming hard and fast, one right after the other and I had to concentrate on my breathing and that was all I could do. Time wore on and it got worse and worse and unbearable. I was telling Bryan between gasps that I couldn’t handle it anymore. They checked me and said maybe I was now a 9 but the effacement was not progressing. I could feel his head and felt I needed to push so that made the constant contractions that much harder. I kept asking them to check me and when they finally did and I hadn’t changed I thought I was going to cry and cry because I could do nothing. The nurses were asking me questions I guess to “keep me calm” but it was only making me madder and more aggravated. (It was dumb. They wanted me to talk to her about anything besides what was going on. I could tell that she just wanted to concentrate on getting the pain to go away. So I figured the best thing to do was to just be there and help her do just that). I was breathing best I could and could only do that and didn’t want to answer their stupid questions. After about 2 hours of enduring this pain one of the nurses asked the question if I wanted any more kids, and between pants I said, yes, 5 more. She laughed at me. I was thinking yes I knew I wanted a big family, but thinking I couldn’t and never wanted to do this again because I wanted to shoot myself in the head – there was no light at the end of the tunnel – I just had to remain in this extreme pain and not progress to the point where I could push and get it over with – even though I was scared to death what THAT was going to feel like when I was already dying. At about 8:15am they checked me again and apparently my effacement was still a problem and they said there was just no way they could have me push in this state. So even with these horrible, hard, back-to-back contractions, my body wasn’t changing. The doctor had the Pitocin stopped and told me that they had another girl having a C-section right now and that once she was done I would be next. I was hurting so bad I was glad to hear that (especially since I’ve always thought a C-section would be easier) because I just wanted it to be OVER, but I was frustrated too because I just didn’t know how I could take it any longer and I didn’t want to wait! Ever so slowly there began to be like 15-30 seconds of relief between contractions (because the Pitocin was wearing off) so I had a chance to breathe normally for a little bit. (I thought that if they stopped the pitocin sooner and she had had a better epidural then she could have gone ahead and pushed like normal. It seemed that after the pitocin had worn off that her contractions went back to where they were supposed to be. I think then her body could have readjusted and she would have been ok but what do I know, I’m just a jet engine mechanic). Also during the last bit of this 3 hour pain-period I had fever of 101.3. I was mad because I was worried about that and they were acting like it wasn’t a big deal. (She even asked them to retake her temp a bit later. The nurse said that she would in about 15 minutes. I didn’t really get that since a fever during pregnancy seems like a big deal). A little bit after that Tori came back in and adjusted my dosage. She said she wished someone would have told her that I was doing so badly, because she thought I could only feel the pelvic pressure that she couldn’t get rid of and I told her I felt every bit of every contraction from side to side and front to back. With this last epidural dosage and the Pitocin stopped, relief came. I was so grateful (later I was mad that this hadn’t been done earlier and that nurses hadn’t went and gotten her!!! -because the only reason she came back in was to get me ready for the c-section)! At 9am they wheeled me and all my IV lines into the O.R. and I took as much pain medication as they would give me because I’ve heard horror stories about that too (!) – where people could feel their c-section – ouch! They were supposed to get Bryan in scrubs so he could come in there but he wasn’t in there yet. Just after they made the incision he came in. After that I could feel the tugging and pulling and them leaning on me and sheesh. (It was crazy! I swear they played tug-o-war with her belly. They got out all the spoons, scoops, ladles, and salad tongs. They opened her up and then started to push on her belly like they were trying to shoot the kid across the room. The two doctors weren’t very big so they had to lift themselves all the way off of the floor to get enough leverage to push). The baby was so far down in the birth canal that they had to go in from the bottom and push him back up so they could pull him out through the cut. [This wasn’t an emergency c-section or anything – baby was doing fine, but I guess later Skylar (the tech we knew) told us I HAD to get a c-section because the baby wasn’t reacting to the contractions like he should have – it was like he was fine where he was and he wasn’t coming out]. It definitely felt like my body was a rag doll being thrown around. It was crazy. Bryan watched it all and said he didn’t get sick. (That’s right. I had watched enough Discovery Channel so I knew I could handle it). Finally they said his head was out but I heard no cry so I started to worry and then finally sort of some grunting sounds and I got a little bit of tears in my eyes and Bryan said at that point he did too (the boy who never cries – seen him cry twice in the 7 years I’ve known him) (I told her not to tell anyone). They told me my uterus was on my stomach. Then they announced that the baby had peed on the nurses. After that I don’t remember a thing. Apparently they showed him to me. During this out-of-it period I was dreaming about this weird alternate world full of rooms of blocks and crap like that. I knew that I had just had surgery and that the baby wasn’t with me and I wondered if something had gone wrong or if I was dead. Man it was weird. (But funny) Later on I could tell Bryan was by me but I felt like I was half in this dream state and half aware of him. I tried to tell him that I was trying to get back to normal, but he recorded me telling him things like this with our digital camera and I look like I don’t know what I’m saying but I really did. I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t for a long time – I couldn’t focus. One of our friends brought Bryan some lunch and I ate his fries before I knew I was basically supposed to be on a liquid diet for 24 hours and I really regretted eating them soon after. I threw up twice. During labor I threw up 3 times but it wasn’t bad at all since all I had was water in me. They wouldn’t let me have water during the last crappy hours of pain when my throat was hurting so bad from all the breathing. Anyway, going backwards a bit – they took the baby to the nursery while they finished me up in O.R. I guess, and they said the father should go too so a nurse goes to take him there but just tells him they’re still working on him but that he’s doing fine and instead of taking Bryan back to the OR to be with me they took him to the room and he sat there by himself for like 30 minutes not knowing if either one of us was okay. Pretty dumb!!! It seemed a bit unorganized for sure. Bryan told me all this and told me that the longer he sat there the more worried he was and he didn’t know how long it was supposed to take with me and that finally he lost it and he said he cried! (I told her not to tell anyone). I wish I could have seen that – the last time I saw him cry we were 19. How sad huh?-stupid nurses. One of them finally came in and told him what was going on and that everything was okay and then he was okay. SO, back to Brock. He had a hard time breathing at first and he was either grunting or like hyperventilating, and they had him on oxygen. They started him on antibiotics because there was some sort of infection, and I also got 3 different antibiotics for infections as well and I was to still be on magnesium for 24 hrs afterwards. My legs and feet seemed to get even more swollen and they said the magnesium makes you retain fluid. I couldn’t get out of bed and so had a catheter that the O.R. put in – I of course was no longer on any pain medication besides Motrin – and I couldn’t feel it at all, so obviously the nurse who put my first catheter in when I was first admitted didn’t do a good job!! Bryan had to help the nurses with moving me just like when I was on the epidural (which was funny). When they came in to massage my stomach – I guess to feel for my uterus to make sure it wasn’t soft and to work out blood clots (really they wanted to check that all of the placenta was out and no pieces got left behind) – that hurt SO bad, it was very hard to breath. So since I was hooked up to a bunch of stuff and couldn’t move anyway, and since Brock was too, I didn’t see him for the first 24 hrs. Bryan left the room several times throughout the day to see him, and he took some pictures with our digital camera so I could at least see those. When I first saw them I was like, dang! - he’s got a big nose! Ha-ha. Bryan helped the nurse a little that night with his bath too, cuz they couldn’t wash him right away when they took him out of me due to his need for the oxygen. I got to see him Thursday morning when they wanted me to try to start breastfeeding. So Bryan helped me out of bed and helped me go to the bathroom and I ever so slowly hobbled down the hall to the nursery to see my boy. Later that day they were able to put him in our room in his little portable basinet-majigger (not to be confused with a baby carrying thing). They were in all the time to take him to do stuff and to check his vitals and stuff though. So they took his blood to test for this infection and it came back positive but the doctor thought it was a contaminant and with how well Brock was doing almost didn’t do another blood test. Saturday morning we found out that it really was positive and he did have Group B Strep (which they suspected due to his struggle to breath at first), which he got from inside my birth canal I guess. They tested me for it at my 36-wk appt and it had come back negative so they said either that was wrong or I had picked it up since then. They said they had already been giving him antibiotics for it since he was born so there should absolutely be no long-term effects. They said that they needed to check for meningitis though and that was scary, but a few hours later the results were back and were negative – phew. But they said even that wouldn’t have been a big problem cuz it was the same antibiotics they were already giving him, they would just need to administer them 14 days instead of only 10. So I tell you what, lots of visitors came and I was doing well and they said how they just cried when someone asked how they were doing after having a baby and I was fine. Yeah well it hit me that first night after seeing him. Just an overwhelming and worried feeling and dang I just felt so emotional. (She cried. Yea this girl that has cried like a hundred times since I’ve known her. She told me not to tell anyone). Friday morning they did his circumcision and they were taking forever so I got worried and cried, and I cried when Shayne Stokes’ wife Alison came to see me that day (she brought us treats!) and she was awesome. Saturday morning I really lost it when we found out that he really did have the infection and that we would be there until the next Friday for all his antibiotics and monitoring. Bryan had already been home a few times to grab things and stuff, and we decided I would go home that night to just have a little time outside of the hospital and to pack a bunch of stuff for our continued stay in the hospital. Because I had been officially discharged from the hospital Friday morning but we still got to stay in the same room with a bed for each of us so we could stay there and take care of Brock in between all the stuff they were doing. They still fed me and everything, and it was enough that me and Bryan could share it. But one guy we know brought Bryan breakfast and lunch on Thursday. And good thing there’s a café on base that’s open 24 hours otherwise we would have starved late at night. So Saturday night I felt good and thought I was a little more emotionally stable. Well, while trying to hurry to get stuff together and take a shower at home, my mom called, and I cried and cried telling her the update, I just couldn’t stop it. (Our families didn’t even know we had had the baby until more than 24 hrs after the fact when we finally called our parents on Thursday). I was so tired though, I could barely make the 10-minute drive each way from house to hospital that night. I had gotten very little sleep since I was admitted Tuesday. I cried as soon as I walked in my front door though – apparently Bryan had given some of my friends the key to the house and they had come and cleaned up the mess from the baby shower and organized it into the baby’s room and they vacuumed and cleaned some other stuff. (It’s a good thing too because if I did it, everything would have been messed up and she would have to redo it all over anyway). I would have never asked them to do that – I was so grateful. So that was awesome. And can I just say that breastfeeding is so stressful! I won’t go into a lot of detail with that, (thank goodness) but it was even more so a stressor because he wasn’t pooping and they were really worried because he was really yellow and his levels of Billyrubin (sp?) were higher than normal which can really only be adjusted by pooping out his excess levels of red blood cells I guess. So they were constantly bugging me about it and we were spending tons of time trying to get it to work and Brock was doing really well but just not getting anything from me. So we continued to just do what you were supposed to do except we had a little itty-bitty feeding tube with formula we’d insert on the side, so he thought it was coming from me, so that we could get something in his stomach so he could poop dangit. After about 24 hrs of doing this formula thing he finally did so that was a big relief, and we only did it once or twice after that. My milk came in late Saturday night finally so that was good but definitely one of the more painful things I’ve experienced. We pumped and got like 4 ounces but there wasn’t much relief at all. Bryan used that to give him a bottle that night because we wanted to see how much he was eating and we hoped that I would be able to get some sleep that way. He drank 2 ounces one time and 1 ounce the other. Well on Sunday I was just dying. I pumped 10 ounces!!!!! I tell you that to try to give you some idea of just how much pain I was in. So anyway, it’s better now and continues to get better every day. Sunday and Monday was spent trying to get another IV site started on Brock, but they kept blowing his veins. All veins had been tried and Stokes came to us and said there were a few spots they could shave on his head and try but couldn’t guarantee those wouldn’t blow too. We opted to go for the shots instead. That night a nurse discussed us going home because Brock was so stable and was doing really well (which is awesome considering they were at first considering sending him to Okinawa to get the help that he needed), and without an IV site we could just come back twice a day for his antibiotic shots. So we were discharged Tuesday afternoon and I was happy but scared too. I got all emotional that night again – man and I thought I had gotten it all out of my system – they weren’t kidding when they say your hormones crash! It was not too fun in the hospital and let’s face it, our bed compared to theirs…..but at the same time it was sort of fun because we were so dang tired that we laughed at everything the other did. Oh I guess I should tell you that Brock weighed 7 lbs. 14 ounces and was 19 ½ in. long. (wow, talk about beating around the bush for a birth announcement). Glad I had him early!! So tonight we went for Brock’s last injection – and wow, it’s over I guess. Now we’re just learning how to handle being parents and I think we learn a lot every day – like how to change his diaper effectively without him peeing all over the place….
So it seemed to be one thing after the other and I’ve been emotional for sure, but not depressed – it’s fun and Brock is awesome and it gets easier every day. Bryan has been awesome – he helps with everything and has been so supportive. I don’t know how I could have done – or how I could do it without him. He was able to get out of the last days of his training class without it affecting him, got this whole week off as a type of “maternity” leave, and 3 days at the beginning of next week because of something he earned for his score for physical training in tech school, so none of this time off actually affects his leave. Then my mom will be here next Friday. My c-section hasn’t been bad at all – the first day was hard but it’s getting easier and easier and now barely inhibits me at all. The shelf down there is weird, and the jiggly skin (although not so jiggly anymore) literally looked like a bowl full of jelly when I laughed and me and Bryan would just watch it and laugh and laugh. My legs and feet remained swollen for some time and even my arms and hands so when they were trying to draw blood they couldn’t find my veins and kept poking me to no avail when normally you can very easily see my huge veins. Just when I thought I was going to be cursed with fat ankles forever, I woke up one day this week and had my legs back. To me they now look “storkish” and I swear they’re smaller than before – Bryan can touch his fingers together when he grips my ankle. I weighed myself when we got home from the hospital and already have lost over 20 pounds – holy cow. We’ve had dinners brought to us so far it’s great.
So this is my journal entry so I’ll remember this experience of mine for the rest of my life. Takes a lot of time to write this much. We love our little babes! Brock Taylor Blumenkrantz is here!
Julie and Bryan
Quite a few pics I've posted below, but the rest can be seen here: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2t7pqtrs.c67go73s&x=0&y=-atx8hs&localeid=en_US
Just click on the link and then click on the picture to start the slideshow. There are some scary pics in there so beware...
11th letter
Fri. 10/6/06
**Bryan read through this afterwards and added his own commentary which is the smaller, blue font.**
I finally have some time to sit down and write down my story. WE HAVE A KID!!!! For those of you who don’t know, which is everyone besides immediate family and whoever they told, Brock is now 9 days old. Yes that’s right; he was born Wednesday, September 27th at 9:30am – over 2 weeks before his due date of October 12th. But of course, I was induced, so that makes it a little different. So I will start at the beginning – it will be extremely detailed because I’m writing this for me pretty much. On Friday, Sept. 22nd I had my 37-wk OB appt (info for later). That night as Bryan was getting out of the shower right before we were going to bed (midnight), I, on sort of a whim I suppose, called Labor and Delivery to ask about my swollen legs and feet (because they remained swollen – there was no change when I got up in the morning). I knew that something like that happens all the time to pregnant people, but for some reason I just wanted to check to see what they had to say about it (never called them before with any problems). They said normally they’re worried about swelling in the hands and face, and that the legs and feet are expected. But they asked if I had had headaches and I said yes, realizing that I had had a constant headache for about the last 4 days (not a bad one, just a nuisance). They asked if my blood pressure was high and I said yes, since I had just had my OB appt earlier that day I knew this. I forgot what the bottom number had been but the top (systolic?) was in the 130’s when it’s normally between 100 and 110. They told me to come in and they would check a few things. So Bryan wasn’t too happy (not true, I was just tired) that I had called and asked if I really wanted to go in and I told him I had given them my name and everything so they were expecting me now. I offered to go by myself but he came with me (cuz I’m awesome). I thought we would just be there for like 10 minutes. We ended up leaving the hospital at 3:30am. What they did was have me lay down on a bed and over a long course of time periodically measured my blood pressure, heart rate, and contractions. I think at that time I hit around 140/90. They had me do a urine test and they took my blood, so we had to wait for the results of that while we were there as well. While waiting and continuing to be monitored I had a few contractions that for the first time were really very uncomfortable; so the nurse decided to check me and said I was 1cm dilated and 80% effaced. Finally we found out that the urine and blood tests had come back normal, but still the nurse was convinced that I had the beginnings of “preeclampsia” (where I guess blood flow to the baby ends up getting cut off and the mother is prone to seizures – and they don’t know what causes it), and I was to now do a 24-hr urine test, and she told me I needed to take it easy and do nothing except to eat and take showers (!) – (I didn’t listen because I was convinced nothing was wrong with me since the tests had come back normal and that she was over-concerned). [The next day – Saturday the 23rd – was my baby shower that the girl I met on the plane ride here threw for me, and tons of people came and I got loads of stuff! It was great!]. So from Sunday morning to Monday morning I saved all the ‘ol urine (gross!) and turned it in Monday morning (Sept. 25th) to the lab. Tuesday morning (the 26th) a nurse called Bryan and told him they couldn’t get a hold of me and that he “needed to find his wife and have her call them.” This made Bryan pretty mad and he called me and this time around I answered the phone (I didn’t the first 2 times and I guess that was the nurse). He wanted me to wait 20 minutes before I called her back because he felt she was so rude to him. (She was! I thought they just wanted to confirm some appointment and it seemed like she wanted me to put everything on hold to do her job of letting my wife know). I knew right away something must not have been right with my urine test, otherwise they wouldn’t be calling. Well that didn’t even cross Bryan’s mind and he thought they were calling to remind me of an appt that I had or something. Funny boy. Like they’d be that urgent for that. Silly. I called her back, it was 10am now, and she told me that I had higher levels of protein in my urine than I should have, reiterated that I should be taking it easy, and asked when I could come in that day for a “non-stress test.” (Julie thought she said anal stress test so she was kind of worried). I just wanted to put it off and I told her 2pm even though Bryan had been coming home from his training class at like 10am (he worked barely any hours in September while in this class, it was awesome – seriously sometimes only an hour and a half a day!). I had pre-planned to have this day devoted to doing homework because I had a test to take that night in one of my online UVSC classes and I hadn’t started any of the reading or homework for this first section. But instead of doing homework until 2 I felt for some reason other things were more important at this time and I packed the hospital bag you pack when you go in to have a baby. I cleaned up the baby room a bit and got things out of the way and the home was pretty much decent except for the mess in the living room from all the stuff I got at the baby shower that I hadn’t had a chance to put away yet. Because Monday I felt it was important to go shopping for food and for some baby things that we didn’t have and to get some other things done; Saturday night I was preparing the talk I gave in Sacrament meeting at church on Sunday, and Sunday night we spent eating dinner with the clan at Josh and Melissa’s house. So Bryan was home way before 2 of course and wanted to go early but I didn’t want to because I guess I just felt like I wouldn’t be leaving once I got there, and I wanted time to go pick up the rocker/recliner for the baby room from the furniture store. So we get there at 2 and I once again get hooked up to have my blood pressure monitored. This time it was consistently higher, and I think the highest I hit was 155/100. After about 45 minutes of it being high and not going back down (Friday night it ended up going a little down), they went to go show the doctor the results. They came back and said they had “good news/bad news: however I wanted to take it.” -That they were keeping me. I changed into a gown and they started an IV for magnesium which I guess is a muscle-relaxant to prevent me from having seizures. At this point I told Bryan that I was scared to death….. The doctor came in and checked me and I was still the same 1cm dilated and 80% effaced, so she manually (with her dang fingers) made me 2cm dilated, which was painful. She then put in the balloon thing (“bolus” I think it’s called-?), that would help me dilate to a 4 or 5. The nurses came back in and put in a catheter – which was interesting – but the most painful part was after it was already in – I constantly felt I had to go to the bathroom so bad that it hurt – very very uncomfortable. I told them from the get-go that I already knew I was going to want an epidural because I’m a wuss. They said to let them know when I wanted it and I mentioned that at my anesthesia appt they told me I had to wait until I was 4cm dilated. The nurse/doctor said it didn’t matter and if it hurt, it hurt, and I could get it whenever I wanted to. So I said ok, sure, I want it now. The contractions were already hurting but nowhere near unbearable, but the catheter was really really irritating and knowing that this balloon inside me was going to rapidly make me a 4…. but more so I wanted it because they were starting Pitocin (labor-inducer) into the IV and I’ve heard the horror stories of the contractions that come good, hard, and fast with that, and if I could, hey, why not avoid that. So they called in the anesthesiologist, who apparently had already worked all day and was already at home, and had to work the next day as well. So she finally came and it wasn’t all that bad at all, but I was definitely hurting a little more by then. The relief was freaking awesome and I could no longer feel the catheter – hallelujah. We go to church with one of the techs – Skylar - and he called the branch president – Shayne Stokes - to let him know I was in labor, because Stokes is one of the 2 pediatricians. (Skylar is the one who told us that a normal level of protein in one’s urine is between 50 and 250 and that mine had been 840. So after coming in and having high blood pressures once again, it was definitely confirmed that I had the infamous preeclampsia, and the only way to escape it is to deliver). Stokes came in and saw me and asked what he could do for us and he called the friends we were supposed to meet for dinner that night to let them know we definitely weren’t going to be able to make it. So that was really nice of him. So 3 of the girls came in and saw me and the word spread from there – I was in a happy-go-lucky mood due to the awesomeness of the epidural. Well as the night wore on the epidural was slowly wearing off so the anesthesiologist –Tori - came back in and adjusted the dosage (she was just resting in one of the other rooms…at my beckon call I guess!). The doctor had also come back in and the bolus came out with just a small tug so now I was further dilated. As the night wore on I did not further dilate. The nurse attending to me that shift (6pm-6am) said that my body was trying to catch up to what the bolus forced my uterus to do. So as it got later and later Bryan tried to find a comfortable sleeping position in one of the chair recliners and couldn’t really. (the chair sucked) And I slept maybe 20 minutes that night. The feelings of the contractions started coming back again but just on the right side, even though I was laying on that side (I couldn’t lay on my back because it made my blood pressure much worse than when I was on my sides) so the medicine should have technically worn off on the left first but it was always the right. After Tori tried to make dosage adjustments previously for this problem and it continuing, she knew she was going to have to redo the epidural so that when I was delivering I wouldn’t only be numb on one side and feel everything on the other. It was the middle of the night now, and I knew that she had woken up to come do this. I tried to wait to have someone get her until I no longer wanted the pain to get any worse, to avoid having to wake her all the time. (Just like Julie. Even in the worst pain ever, she doesn’t want to bother someone else or make them go out of their way to help her. I figured this was the time and place to make someone go out of their way to take care of her especially if that was her job). So it was re-done, a little higher than the first, and the pain subsided once again. Since I was not progressing past 5cm-dilated, they decided to monitor my contractions from inside the placenta by putting the little monitor way up inside me, so they would get an accurate measurement of the severity of the contractions (I guess the monitor on the outside measures them but is not accurate on how big they are). (I always thought that something comes out during the birth process not the other way around). Once it was inside me it showed a little bit smaller contractions than previously. It continued on and on like this. As it started to turn into the early morning hours they checked me again and surprise surprise I was 8cm and 90% effaced. I started to feel the pressure on my pelvic bone and that really was not comfortable and once again started to feel contractions so Tori was called in once again. She adjusted dosage and the pain went away but the pelvic pressure would not and she said there was nothing else she could do. (bologna) The nurse told me that they do not use as dense of a mixture here for their epidurals as where she had come from in the states (she’s only here for 8 months), and thus all pain was not gone during the final stages of delivery/labor. Tori (anesthesiologist) said that all of the nerves could not be numbed in the birth canal or something like that. So that was that. At this point the Pitocin level was extremely high so I was grateful I could not feel it. The morning wore on and the nurses had their shift change (which I was sad about because my nurse was AWESOME). The contractions had been starting to hurt again and just after 6am really started to get more intense. Then I swear I was dying. I felt every bit of it and there was no relief between contractions. My epidural was completely gone. They were coming hard and fast, one right after the other and I had to concentrate on my breathing and that was all I could do. Time wore on and it got worse and worse and unbearable. I was telling Bryan between gasps that I couldn’t handle it anymore. They checked me and said maybe I was now a 9 but the effacement was not progressing. I could feel his head and felt I needed to push so that made the constant contractions that much harder. I kept asking them to check me and when they finally did and I hadn’t changed I thought I was going to cry and cry because I could do nothing. The nurses were asking me questions I guess to “keep me calm” but it was only making me madder and more aggravated. (It was dumb. They wanted me to talk to her about anything besides what was going on. I could tell that she just wanted to concentrate on getting the pain to go away. So I figured the best thing to do was to just be there and help her do just that). I was breathing best I could and could only do that and didn’t want to answer their stupid questions. After about 2 hours of enduring this pain one of the nurses asked the question if I wanted any more kids, and between pants I said, yes, 5 more. She laughed at me. I was thinking yes I knew I wanted a big family, but thinking I couldn’t and never wanted to do this again because I wanted to shoot myself in the head – there was no light at the end of the tunnel – I just had to remain in this extreme pain and not progress to the point where I could push and get it over with – even though I was scared to death what THAT was going to feel like when I was already dying. At about 8:15am they checked me again and apparently my effacement was still a problem and they said there was just no way they could have me push in this state. So even with these horrible, hard, back-to-back contractions, my body wasn’t changing. The doctor had the Pitocin stopped and told me that they had another girl having a C-section right now and that once she was done I would be next. I was hurting so bad I was glad to hear that (especially since I’ve always thought a C-section would be easier) because I just wanted it to be OVER, but I was frustrated too because I just didn’t know how I could take it any longer and I didn’t want to wait! Ever so slowly there began to be like 15-30 seconds of relief between contractions (because the Pitocin was wearing off) so I had a chance to breathe normally for a little bit. (I thought that if they stopped the pitocin sooner and she had had a better epidural then she could have gone ahead and pushed like normal. It seemed that after the pitocin had worn off that her contractions went back to where they were supposed to be. I think then her body could have readjusted and she would have been ok but what do I know, I’m just a jet engine mechanic). Also during the last bit of this 3 hour pain-period I had fever of 101.3. I was mad because I was worried about that and they were acting like it wasn’t a big deal. (She even asked them to retake her temp a bit later. The nurse said that she would in about 15 minutes. I didn’t really get that since a fever during pregnancy seems like a big deal). A little bit after that Tori came back in and adjusted my dosage. She said she wished someone would have told her that I was doing so badly, because she thought I could only feel the pelvic pressure that she couldn’t get rid of and I told her I felt every bit of every contraction from side to side and front to back. With this last epidural dosage and the Pitocin stopped, relief came. I was so grateful (later I was mad that this hadn’t been done earlier and that nurses hadn’t went and gotten her!!! -because the only reason she came back in was to get me ready for the c-section)! At 9am they wheeled me and all my IV lines into the O.R. and I took as much pain medication as they would give me because I’ve heard horror stories about that too (!) – where people could feel their c-section – ouch! They were supposed to get Bryan in scrubs so he could come in there but he wasn’t in there yet. Just after they made the incision he came in. After that I could feel the tugging and pulling and them leaning on me and sheesh. (It was crazy! I swear they played tug-o-war with her belly. They got out all the spoons, scoops, ladles, and salad tongs. They opened her up and then started to push on her belly like they were trying to shoot the kid across the room. The two doctors weren’t very big so they had to lift themselves all the way off of the floor to get enough leverage to push). The baby was so far down in the birth canal that they had to go in from the bottom and push him back up so they could pull him out through the cut. [This wasn’t an emergency c-section or anything – baby was doing fine, but I guess later Skylar (the tech we knew) told us I HAD to get a c-section because the baby wasn’t reacting to the contractions like he should have – it was like he was fine where he was and he wasn’t coming out]. It definitely felt like my body was a rag doll being thrown around. It was crazy. Bryan watched it all and said he didn’t get sick. (That’s right. I had watched enough Discovery Channel so I knew I could handle it). Finally they said his head was out but I heard no cry so I started to worry and then finally sort of some grunting sounds and I got a little bit of tears in my eyes and Bryan said at that point he did too (the boy who never cries – seen him cry twice in the 7 years I’ve known him) (I told her not to tell anyone). They told me my uterus was on my stomach. Then they announced that the baby had peed on the nurses. After that I don’t remember a thing. Apparently they showed him to me. During this out-of-it period I was dreaming about this weird alternate world full of rooms of blocks and crap like that. I knew that I had just had surgery and that the baby wasn’t with me and I wondered if something had gone wrong or if I was dead. Man it was weird. (But funny) Later on I could tell Bryan was by me but I felt like I was half in this dream state and half aware of him. I tried to tell him that I was trying to get back to normal, but he recorded me telling him things like this with our digital camera and I look like I don’t know what I’m saying but I really did. I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t for a long time – I couldn’t focus. One of our friends brought Bryan some lunch and I ate his fries before I knew I was basically supposed to be on a liquid diet for 24 hours and I really regretted eating them soon after. I threw up twice. During labor I threw up 3 times but it wasn’t bad at all since all I had was water in me. They wouldn’t let me have water during the last crappy hours of pain when my throat was hurting so bad from all the breathing. Anyway, going backwards a bit – they took the baby to the nursery while they finished me up in O.R. I guess, and they said the father should go too so a nurse goes to take him there but just tells him they’re still working on him but that he’s doing fine and instead of taking Bryan back to the OR to be with me they took him to the room and he sat there by himself for like 30 minutes not knowing if either one of us was okay. Pretty dumb!!! It seemed a bit unorganized for sure. Bryan told me all this and told me that the longer he sat there the more worried he was and he didn’t know how long it was supposed to take with me and that finally he lost it and he said he cried! (I told her not to tell anyone). I wish I could have seen that – the last time I saw him cry we were 19. How sad huh?-stupid nurses. One of them finally came in and told him what was going on and that everything was okay and then he was okay. SO, back to Brock. He had a hard time breathing at first and he was either grunting or like hyperventilating, and they had him on oxygen. They started him on antibiotics because there was some sort of infection, and I also got 3 different antibiotics for infections as well and I was to still be on magnesium for 24 hrs afterwards. My legs and feet seemed to get even more swollen and they said the magnesium makes you retain fluid. I couldn’t get out of bed and so had a catheter that the O.R. put in – I of course was no longer on any pain medication besides Motrin – and I couldn’t feel it at all, so obviously the nurse who put my first catheter in when I was first admitted didn’t do a good job!! Bryan had to help the nurses with moving me just like when I was on the epidural (which was funny). When they came in to massage my stomach – I guess to feel for my uterus to make sure it wasn’t soft and to work out blood clots (really they wanted to check that all of the placenta was out and no pieces got left behind) – that hurt SO bad, it was very hard to breath. So since I was hooked up to a bunch of stuff and couldn’t move anyway, and since Brock was too, I didn’t see him for the first 24 hrs. Bryan left the room several times throughout the day to see him, and he took some pictures with our digital camera so I could at least see those. When I first saw them I was like, dang! - he’s got a big nose! Ha-ha. Bryan helped the nurse a little that night with his bath too, cuz they couldn’t wash him right away when they took him out of me due to his need for the oxygen. I got to see him Thursday morning when they wanted me to try to start breastfeeding. So Bryan helped me out of bed and helped me go to the bathroom and I ever so slowly hobbled down the hall to the nursery to see my boy. Later that day they were able to put him in our room in his little portable basinet-majigger (not to be confused with a baby carrying thing). They were in all the time to take him to do stuff and to check his vitals and stuff though. So they took his blood to test for this infection and it came back positive but the doctor thought it was a contaminant and with how well Brock was doing almost didn’t do another blood test. Saturday morning we found out that it really was positive and he did have Group B Strep (which they suspected due to his struggle to breath at first), which he got from inside my birth canal I guess. They tested me for it at my 36-wk appt and it had come back negative so they said either that was wrong or I had picked it up since then. They said they had already been giving him antibiotics for it since he was born so there should absolutely be no long-term effects. They said that they needed to check for meningitis though and that was scary, but a few hours later the results were back and were negative – phew. But they said even that wouldn’t have been a big problem cuz it was the same antibiotics they were already giving him, they would just need to administer them 14 days instead of only 10. So I tell you what, lots of visitors came and I was doing well and they said how they just cried when someone asked how they were doing after having a baby and I was fine. Yeah well it hit me that first night after seeing him. Just an overwhelming and worried feeling and dang I just felt so emotional. (She cried. Yea this girl that has cried like a hundred times since I’ve known her. She told me not to tell anyone). Friday morning they did his circumcision and they were taking forever so I got worried and cried, and I cried when Shayne Stokes’ wife Alison came to see me that day (she brought us treats!) and she was awesome. Saturday morning I really lost it when we found out that he really did have the infection and that we would be there until the next Friday for all his antibiotics and monitoring. Bryan had already been home a few times to grab things and stuff, and we decided I would go home that night to just have a little time outside of the hospital and to pack a bunch of stuff for our continued stay in the hospital. Because I had been officially discharged from the hospital Friday morning but we still got to stay in the same room with a bed for each of us so we could stay there and take care of Brock in between all the stuff they were doing. They still fed me and everything, and it was enough that me and Bryan could share it. But one guy we know brought Bryan breakfast and lunch on Thursday. And good thing there’s a café on base that’s open 24 hours otherwise we would have starved late at night. So Saturday night I felt good and thought I was a little more emotionally stable. Well, while trying to hurry to get stuff together and take a shower at home, my mom called, and I cried and cried telling her the update, I just couldn’t stop it. (Our families didn’t even know we had had the baby until more than 24 hrs after the fact when we finally called our parents on Thursday). I was so tired though, I could barely make the 10-minute drive each way from house to hospital that night. I had gotten very little sleep since I was admitted Tuesday. I cried as soon as I walked in my front door though – apparently Bryan had given some of my friends the key to the house and they had come and cleaned up the mess from the baby shower and organized it into the baby’s room and they vacuumed and cleaned some other stuff. (It’s a good thing too because if I did it, everything would have been messed up and she would have to redo it all over anyway). I would have never asked them to do that – I was so grateful. So that was awesome. And can I just say that breastfeeding is so stressful! I won’t go into a lot of detail with that, (thank goodness) but it was even more so a stressor because he wasn’t pooping and they were really worried because he was really yellow and his levels of Billyrubin (sp?) were higher than normal which can really only be adjusted by pooping out his excess levels of red blood cells I guess. So they were constantly bugging me about it and we were spending tons of time trying to get it to work and Brock was doing really well but just not getting anything from me. So we continued to just do what you were supposed to do except we had a little itty-bitty feeding tube with formula we’d insert on the side, so he thought it was coming from me, so that we could get something in his stomach so he could poop dangit. After about 24 hrs of doing this formula thing he finally did so that was a big relief, and we only did it once or twice after that. My milk came in late Saturday night finally so that was good but definitely one of the more painful things I’ve experienced. We pumped and got like 4 ounces but there wasn’t much relief at all. Bryan used that to give him a bottle that night because we wanted to see how much he was eating and we hoped that I would be able to get some sleep that way. He drank 2 ounces one time and 1 ounce the other. Well on Sunday I was just dying. I pumped 10 ounces!!!!! I tell you that to try to give you some idea of just how much pain I was in. So anyway, it’s better now and continues to get better every day. Sunday and Monday was spent trying to get another IV site started on Brock, but they kept blowing his veins. All veins had been tried and Stokes came to us and said there were a few spots they could shave on his head and try but couldn’t guarantee those wouldn’t blow too. We opted to go for the shots instead. That night a nurse discussed us going home because Brock was so stable and was doing really well (which is awesome considering they were at first considering sending him to Okinawa to get the help that he needed), and without an IV site we could just come back twice a day for his antibiotic shots. So we were discharged Tuesday afternoon and I was happy but scared too. I got all emotional that night again – man and I thought I had gotten it all out of my system – they weren’t kidding when they say your hormones crash! It was not too fun in the hospital and let’s face it, our bed compared to theirs…..but at the same time it was sort of fun because we were so dang tired that we laughed at everything the other did. Oh I guess I should tell you that Brock weighed 7 lbs. 14 ounces and was 19 ½ in. long. (wow, talk about beating around the bush for a birth announcement). Glad I had him early!! So tonight we went for Brock’s last injection – and wow, it’s over I guess. Now we’re just learning how to handle being parents and I think we learn a lot every day – like how to change his diaper effectively without him peeing all over the place….
So it seemed to be one thing after the other and I’ve been emotional for sure, but not depressed – it’s fun and Brock is awesome and it gets easier every day. Bryan has been awesome – he helps with everything and has been so supportive. I don’t know how I could have done – or how I could do it without him. He was able to get out of the last days of his training class without it affecting him, got this whole week off as a type of “maternity” leave, and 3 days at the beginning of next week because of something he earned for his score for physical training in tech school, so none of this time off actually affects his leave. Then my mom will be here next Friday. My c-section hasn’t been bad at all – the first day was hard but it’s getting easier and easier and now barely inhibits me at all. The shelf down there is weird, and the jiggly skin (although not so jiggly anymore) literally looked like a bowl full of jelly when I laughed and me and Bryan would just watch it and laugh and laugh. My legs and feet remained swollen for some time and even my arms and hands so when they were trying to draw blood they couldn’t find my veins and kept poking me to no avail when normally you can very easily see my huge veins. Just when I thought I was going to be cursed with fat ankles forever, I woke up one day this week and had my legs back. To me they now look “storkish” and I swear they’re smaller than before – Bryan can touch his fingers together when he grips my ankle. I weighed myself when we got home from the hospital and already have lost over 20 pounds – holy cow. We’ve had dinners brought to us so far it’s great.
So this is my journal entry so I’ll remember this experience of mine for the rest of my life. Takes a lot of time to write this much. We love our little babes! Brock Taylor Blumenkrantz is here!
Julie and Bryan
Quite a few pics I've posted below, but the rest can be seen here: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2t7pqtrs.c67go73s&x=0&y=-atx8hs&localeid=en_US
Just click on the link and then click on the picture to start the slideshow. There are some scary pics in there so beware...
September pics
Another scary bare belly shot on 9/15/06. (Was due Oct. 12th, so this is the belly at the end of the pregnancy!)
Baby shower cake on 9/23/06 - Kasie made it for me!
9/27/06 - Brock Taylor is born!!
Brock was born Wednesday, September 27, 2006, at 9:30am!
(2 weeks early)
7 lbs 14 oz
19 1/2 in.
Our poor son!! - Born with Group B Strep - delivered by C-section after almost 19 hrs of labor!
ACK!
Saturday, 9/30/06
AAAAAAHHHH! I told you I had a rough day Sat. morning! (I'd been bawling all morning) Bryan put this Boppy around my neck and thought it was hilarious.
Time to go home!
Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2006We finally get to go home from the hospital!
Brock's now 6 days old!
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
9/12/06 - 10th Letter
10th letter
Tues. 9/12/06
So I suppose I should write another letter seeing as I think the last one was Aug. 22nd! Well I can’t believe tomorrow I’ll be 36 weeks pregnant! They tell you the baby can come anytime now, which is just crazy. I can’t believe we’re gonna have a baby in the house soon – so many things will definitely be different! I have an OB appt on Friday so they’ll double check that the baby is in the right position – I hope they have to do an ultrasound to be sure, cuz then we could check how big the baby is and how much he weighs. Bryan is pretty confident that he will come a few days after my mom gets here on Oct. 13th. Although, yesterday we put the crib together (finally got the missing pieces that we left in Texas!), and Bryan said it looked pretty empty and told me, ok, now the baby could come – and he was telling me it was time to have the baby. My friend was a massage therapist and she is going to show us a few techniques to help things along – she helped put one of her friends in labor, but the other into just a lot of false labor! I don’t think we’ll really try to do that until he’s actually due –Oct. 12th. Because I have too much homework I’ve got to get done before then!!! And aaahhh!-I’m not ready! I’m tellin’ ya, if they tell me I have to have a c-section for some reason, I will NOT be devastated. You all can make fun of me as much as you want for that but I still feel that way! Bryan and I went to a Child Birthing class on Saturday for about 4 hrs and that was interesting. The videos were definitely NOT my favorite things to watch – yuck. And last Friday I went to a 2-hr Breastfeeding class, this Thursday there’s a 3-hr Baby Care Basics class, and next Monday a 4-hr Bundles for Babies class where I guess you get a lot of free stuff. So far I’ve already gotten another 2 diaper bags from these classes though!
Bryan is in training right now – a class with 2 other guys. It goes from Sept. 6th – 29th. His schedule is awesome. He doesn’t have to be there until 7:30am- sometimes 8- he has lunch from 10-12- sometimes it starts at 9:30- and then he gets home at 2-sometimes 1!! So yes, it’s like an average of only 3 ½ hrs a day and he’s done. Pretty awesome eh?! We sure have been blessed with cool schedules like that, that really enables him to get a lot of other things done, without even feeling like he’s actually busy! The “Exercise” that I was telling you about in the last letter, where the whole base acts like they’re deployed or at war or whatever and they have to sit around in their chem. suits all day, Bryan pretty much hated that. He worked 5am-5pm Thurs, Fri, Sat (24-26), had Sun. off, and then worked 5-5 again on Mon and Tues (28-29). On Wed. the 30th he had to go in at 5am but got off at 3, then on Thurs went in at the normal time of 6am and got off at 11am, then had Friday off (and then of course Monday off too for Labor Day). So, long days yes, but only a few. He said they sat around a lot and watched a lot of movies. So yeah, his work is pretty tough. I thought it was pretty funny in his mom’s letter – when people are asking how he is doing and she told them he sits around all day and the government pays him. When I read that to him he said, “Hey that’s not true!” HA.
Bryan had to do Sharing Time in Primary the last Sunday in August, and didn’t realize until the last minute that he’s actually supposed to involve his class too. Funny. He has one kid in his class who really bugs him – just doesn’t listen at all. He can barely teach a lesson cuz he’s messing with him the whole time, and in closing exercises he’s really disrupting the whole group. AND, his mom is in there! She does nothing. It frustrates me to death and I’m not even in there with him. You just want to smack him. But it’s obvious the parents don’t do anything about it which just makes you mad at them.
We’ve taken our turn cleaning the church – every week 2 families are assigned to go in there and vacuum and clean off the boards and dust and get all the chairs organized for Sunday. We also went to another festival the first Saturday of this month at Lake Towada (the same place that you guys saw the pictures of the fireworks at). We were pretty proud of ourselves because we made the 2-hr drive on our own and didn’t get lost and actually made it there on time. They had big floats and dancers and the coolest of all – these huge lantern-pyramid things on a big ‘ol stick like 2 stories high, that guys would balance by themselves on their foreheads and stuff. I’ll send some pictures of this, but it will be hard to see what’s going on. So now you’ll know what we were trying to take pictures of. The Sunday over Labor Day weekend we went to Liz and Justin’s (they host a lot!) and they fed us all a bunch of scones – so good! On Labor Day we went over to the couple’s house that we met on the plane on the way over here, and they had quite the barbeque. She (Kasie) cooked a bunch of really good food. I was so stuffed I could barely breath (that seems to be what happens when you have a huge pregnant belly!)! The base put on some decent fireworks that they shot off from the middle of the lake. The base also had an afternoon thing at the beach where we got free food, so it was a good day. Kasie is the one who will be putting on my baby shower for me. She wanted to do it this Saturday the 16th even though I wanted to give people more notice and do it the 23rd, cuz she thought I’d have my baby before then! (Although she is the one who said, “Barely anyone really ever goes the full 40 weeks") – umm.. yeah. But we’re doing it the 23rd. She wanted to do it co-ed too, but Bryan said NO. Which is good, I doubt the other husbands would want to come either. We went to a luncheon one of our friend’s put on last Saturday, for a couple that’s flying out of here tomorrow – they’re going to New Mexico – hope we never go there!!! This is the same couple that gave us their stroller/carrier/car base combo. It’s in really good shape and is like a navy blue plaid with tan. Way nice of them.
But most exciting of all was the Air Show they had this last weekend. It was pretty cool and there were TONS of Japanese on base cuz they open the gates to all for it. But we forgot our camera, sorry. It was the first air show we’ve ever been to. Bryan was disappointed with the F-15s performance, cuz the F-16s and F-18s (Navy) put on a better show. The show ended with a performance from the Japanese “Blue Impulse” and that was fun to watch. It was hot that day and we were out there for 7 hours – Bryan was really excited that he got his tan wife back.
The weather has actually improved quite a bit though. Things aren’t melting at our room temperature anymore and I don’t feel like crying every day anymore cuz there’s no escape. We still have all our fans on of course, but you can move around and do stuff, you don’t have to stay motionless in front of the fan all day.
We can’t wait for Lost Season 3 to start up in October. They aren’t up-to-date here on the programming, but as soon as it plays in the states I can download it for us to watch. We watched the1st season the first weekend we were here (borrowed it from his supervisor), and then over the last week watched the 2nd season cuz I was able to download it. We’ve also watched the 1st season of Prison Break cuz I was able to download that too. So yeah, we haven’t been that busy, when we have time to do that!! I have quite a bit of homework that I need to get way ahead on if I’m going to pass these 2 classes this semester though! My books cost $330!!! Sheesh.
Bryan talked to the lady who schedules and administers the officer test, and asked her about taking it end of September/beginning of October. She says that she thinks the next one will be scheduled end of October/beginning of November. Which is dumb – she’s the one who schedules it – she can decide whenever. It’s not like there’s a lot of people taking this test!! Retarded.
So, Kasie (girl we met on plane who is doing the baby shower for me), already invited us over for Thanksgiving dinner – yes that’s right, you heard me. So apparently we’re already reserved. A little weird, but, we do know it will be an awesome dinner from what we saw at the barbeque of hers we went to!! No, but she is really nice and will always put aside her own time to do whatever for you.
So I’m sending a few pictures as well again. They’re a little boring and I didn’t take any of my belly cuz I really don’t think it’s all that different size-wise, but I’ll send a picture of it with the next letter. Like I said you’ll see the ones from the Lake Towada festival, and then there’s a few of the church off base and a picture from off base right around the church, a few of the streets off base, and then of one of the smallest cars I’ve ever seen. I call it the “blue bubble.” I think it’s the smallest car here and it’s hilarious. And Bryan said I didn’t send pictures of our storage unit last time when I sent all the apartment pictures, and so I know you’re all just SO interested in seeing what it looks like, so that’s in there too.
Anyway, I’m done writing. Bryan is dying for this baby to come and I’m pretty nervous myself. But hope you all are doing as good as we are!!
THE BLUMENKRANTZ’S
I posted most of the pictures. There are a few more if you click on this link and then click on the picture to start the slideshow: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2t7pqtrs.a90y2siw&x=0&y=4minud&localeid=en_US
Tues. 9/12/06
So I suppose I should write another letter seeing as I think the last one was Aug. 22nd! Well I can’t believe tomorrow I’ll be 36 weeks pregnant! They tell you the baby can come anytime now, which is just crazy. I can’t believe we’re gonna have a baby in the house soon – so many things will definitely be different! I have an OB appt on Friday so they’ll double check that the baby is in the right position – I hope they have to do an ultrasound to be sure, cuz then we could check how big the baby is and how much he weighs. Bryan is pretty confident that he will come a few days after my mom gets here on Oct. 13th. Although, yesterday we put the crib together (finally got the missing pieces that we left in Texas!), and Bryan said it looked pretty empty and told me, ok, now the baby could come – and he was telling me it was time to have the baby. My friend was a massage therapist and she is going to show us a few techniques to help things along – she helped put one of her friends in labor, but the other into just a lot of false labor! I don’t think we’ll really try to do that until he’s actually due –Oct. 12th. Because I have too much homework I’ve got to get done before then!!! And aaahhh!-I’m not ready! I’m tellin’ ya, if they tell me I have to have a c-section for some reason, I will NOT be devastated. You all can make fun of me as much as you want for that but I still feel that way! Bryan and I went to a Child Birthing class on Saturday for about 4 hrs and that was interesting. The videos were definitely NOT my favorite things to watch – yuck. And last Friday I went to a 2-hr Breastfeeding class, this Thursday there’s a 3-hr Baby Care Basics class, and next Monday a 4-hr Bundles for Babies class where I guess you get a lot of free stuff. So far I’ve already gotten another 2 diaper bags from these classes though!
Bryan is in training right now – a class with 2 other guys. It goes from Sept. 6th – 29th. His schedule is awesome. He doesn’t have to be there until 7:30am- sometimes 8- he has lunch from 10-12- sometimes it starts at 9:30- and then he gets home at 2-sometimes 1!! So yes, it’s like an average of only 3 ½ hrs a day and he’s done. Pretty awesome eh?! We sure have been blessed with cool schedules like that, that really enables him to get a lot of other things done, without even feeling like he’s actually busy! The “Exercise” that I was telling you about in the last letter, where the whole base acts like they’re deployed or at war or whatever and they have to sit around in their chem. suits all day, Bryan pretty much hated that. He worked 5am-5pm Thurs, Fri, Sat (24-26), had Sun. off, and then worked 5-5 again on Mon and Tues (28-29). On Wed. the 30th he had to go in at 5am but got off at 3, then on Thurs went in at the normal time of 6am and got off at 11am, then had Friday off (and then of course Monday off too for Labor Day). So, long days yes, but only a few. He said they sat around a lot and watched a lot of movies. So yeah, his work is pretty tough. I thought it was pretty funny in his mom’s letter – when people are asking how he is doing and she told them he sits around all day and the government pays him. When I read that to him he said, “Hey that’s not true!” HA.
Bryan had to do Sharing Time in Primary the last Sunday in August, and didn’t realize until the last minute that he’s actually supposed to involve his class too. Funny. He has one kid in his class who really bugs him – just doesn’t listen at all. He can barely teach a lesson cuz he’s messing with him the whole time, and in closing exercises he’s really disrupting the whole group. AND, his mom is in there! She does nothing. It frustrates me to death and I’m not even in there with him. You just want to smack him. But it’s obvious the parents don’t do anything about it which just makes you mad at them.
We’ve taken our turn cleaning the church – every week 2 families are assigned to go in there and vacuum and clean off the boards and dust and get all the chairs organized for Sunday. We also went to another festival the first Saturday of this month at Lake Towada (the same place that you guys saw the pictures of the fireworks at). We were pretty proud of ourselves because we made the 2-hr drive on our own and didn’t get lost and actually made it there on time. They had big floats and dancers and the coolest of all – these huge lantern-pyramid things on a big ‘ol stick like 2 stories high, that guys would balance by themselves on their foreheads and stuff. I’ll send some pictures of this, but it will be hard to see what’s going on. So now you’ll know what we were trying to take pictures of. The Sunday over Labor Day weekend we went to Liz and Justin’s (they host a lot!) and they fed us all a bunch of scones – so good! On Labor Day we went over to the couple’s house that we met on the plane on the way over here, and they had quite the barbeque. She (Kasie) cooked a bunch of really good food. I was so stuffed I could barely breath (that seems to be what happens when you have a huge pregnant belly!)! The base put on some decent fireworks that they shot off from the middle of the lake. The base also had an afternoon thing at the beach where we got free food, so it was a good day. Kasie is the one who will be putting on my baby shower for me. She wanted to do it this Saturday the 16th even though I wanted to give people more notice and do it the 23rd, cuz she thought I’d have my baby before then! (Although she is the one who said, “Barely anyone really ever goes the full 40 weeks") – umm.. yeah. But we’re doing it the 23rd. She wanted to do it co-ed too, but Bryan said NO. Which is good, I doubt the other husbands would want to come either. We went to a luncheon one of our friend’s put on last Saturday, for a couple that’s flying out of here tomorrow – they’re going to New Mexico – hope we never go there!!! This is the same couple that gave us their stroller/carrier/car base combo. It’s in really good shape and is like a navy blue plaid with tan. Way nice of them.
But most exciting of all was the Air Show they had this last weekend. It was pretty cool and there were TONS of Japanese on base cuz they open the gates to all for it. But we forgot our camera, sorry. It was the first air show we’ve ever been to. Bryan was disappointed with the F-15s performance, cuz the F-16s and F-18s (Navy) put on a better show. The show ended with a performance from the Japanese “Blue Impulse” and that was fun to watch. It was hot that day and we were out there for 7 hours – Bryan was really excited that he got his tan wife back.
The weather has actually improved quite a bit though. Things aren’t melting at our room temperature anymore and I don’t feel like crying every day anymore cuz there’s no escape. We still have all our fans on of course, but you can move around and do stuff, you don’t have to stay motionless in front of the fan all day.
We can’t wait for Lost Season 3 to start up in October. They aren’t up-to-date here on the programming, but as soon as it plays in the states I can download it for us to watch. We watched the1st season the first weekend we were here (borrowed it from his supervisor), and then over the last week watched the 2nd season cuz I was able to download it. We’ve also watched the 1st season of Prison Break cuz I was able to download that too. So yeah, we haven’t been that busy, when we have time to do that!! I have quite a bit of homework that I need to get way ahead on if I’m going to pass these 2 classes this semester though! My books cost $330!!! Sheesh.
Bryan talked to the lady who schedules and administers the officer test, and asked her about taking it end of September/beginning of October. She says that she thinks the next one will be scheduled end of October/beginning of November. Which is dumb – she’s the one who schedules it – she can decide whenever. It’s not like there’s a lot of people taking this test!! Retarded.
So, Kasie (girl we met on plane who is doing the baby shower for me), already invited us over for Thanksgiving dinner – yes that’s right, you heard me. So apparently we’re already reserved. A little weird, but, we do know it will be an awesome dinner from what we saw at the barbeque of hers we went to!! No, but she is really nice and will always put aside her own time to do whatever for you.
So I’m sending a few pictures as well again. They’re a little boring and I didn’t take any of my belly cuz I really don’t think it’s all that different size-wise, but I’ll send a picture of it with the next letter. Like I said you’ll see the ones from the Lake Towada festival, and then there’s a few of the church off base and a picture from off base right around the church, a few of the streets off base, and then of one of the smallest cars I’ve ever seen. I call it the “blue bubble.” I think it’s the smallest car here and it’s hilarious. And Bryan said I didn’t send pictures of our storage unit last time when I sent all the apartment pictures, and so I know you’re all just SO interested in seeing what it looks like, so that’s in there too.
Anyway, I’m done writing. Bryan is dying for this baby to come and I’m pretty nervous myself. But hope you all are doing as good as we are!!
THE BLUMENKRANTZ’S
I posted most of the pictures. There are a few more if you click on this link and then click on the picture to start the slideshow: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2t7pqtrs.a90y2siw&x=0&y=4minud&localeid=en_US
The Bubble!
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Another road in the world of off-base Misawa, Japan.
And for the car...all I can say is...lol.
Church building
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Our church building off base - very small for how many people attend there!! The building is for both the American and Japanese members.
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Tuesday, August 22, 2006
8/22/06 - 9th Letter
9th letter
Man it is HOT. We hit 96 degrees last Thursday – with the nasty humidity here need I remind you; talk about feeling like Houston!! *JENNI – I know how you feel about the weather there – you really can feel the sweat dripping down your back and it’s so disgusting and you can’t do anything about it! (Except we could escape it there, with our apartment always set at like 65 degrees!) I can’t believe I didn’t complain more about it than I did, when I was there. Our arms were always glistening – GROSS.* But it is time to complain more about it here. Our bathroom always has a “damp” smell to it. The back of our toilet is always condensating (not really a word) and dripping onto the floor. Our towels have to be replaced almost every day because they never dry!! Everything in the house kind of feels “moist” sometimes. And don’t buy a lot of boxes of cereal at one time because they won’t stay good! Blah blah blah. But I think I always just feel hotter than everyone else. I don’t know – must have something to do with this mysterious huge lump that I have on my front side. Never feel like doing a lot of physical stuff cuz sometimes it’s just so suffocating. Sucks to have to carry a fan with you wherever you go in the house (because in case you all don’t remember – WE DON’T HAVE A/C).
Once September hits it’s gonna feel like this baby thing is so close. I can’t believe it sometimes. Most of the time I just don’t feel ready! The feeling changes every day. Today I feel excited. I guess I’m always excited, just some days more than others, and some days it’s accompanied by other feelings as well! But I’m excited too about getting back to feeling normal. Although people have told me how they feel after having a baby and it doesn’t always sound normal! No, but, like my stomach. I feel sick a lot, but I know it also goes hand in hand with this heat. I am glad that the baby is coming in October (the 12th) after all the heat is gone. You think I’d want to have him now so that I don’t feel as hot, but it seems like it would be so hot if you always had this little warm body that you’re holding! I had a bunch of weird baby dreams last night, but I had a girl. I’ll be 33 wks tomorrow. I have been pretty consistent with the whole gaining a pound a week, for the last 6 weeks! I’ve gained 13 pounds since before I was pregnant, but if you count the 7 that I lost at the beginning of the pregnancy then it’s 20. But yeah, let’s face it; I was pretty chubby before I got pregnant so I was hoping to gain as little as possible because I already had all the baby could need!! So I have a lot to lose after the baby is born! The girl I lived with while Bryan was at tech school, her baby is just over 3 mos old, and she’s already lost 54 pounds!! (Jessica I hope you don’t mind me sharing that!) I have been having some painful “tightenings” of my lower stomach, which yesterday the doctor said were contractions. She said to be careful not to get dehydrated because that will bring them on and I’m just too early to be having the baby quite yet! It is really crazy that I could have the baby in 3 weeks and it really would be ok. Especially in 4 weeks, then it really would be considered ok and not that big of a deal! That’s so soon!!!
I pulled another retardo yesterday. I was opening the door of the pantry to throw something away and put my foot right in the way of the opening door – so when I yanked open the door I ripped off my toenail. Eeesh it hurt. Then I didn’t realize it was bleeding so I had to clean blood off the carpet too. Yuck. What a dummy!
Bryan finished his summer semester last Monday. He got 2 A’s and 2 A-‘s. In one of his classes he needed 385.4 points to get an A, and he got 385. !!!! Sheesh. So now the Fall semester starts tomorrow. His last 4 classes – YAY!! Advanced Aerodynamics, High Altitude Navigation Management, his last English, and his class for his research paper that he has to write for his Bachelor’s. I am also taking 2 classes and I’m not excited. The books are over $100 each, and we didn’t get our usual pell grants this year cuz we made too much money last year! Dang.
We went to dinner on Sunday at Liz and Justin’s house, with a bunch of others. I’m glad those dinners happen often here – it’s really fun. Liz was telling us how after she had the baby she would keep waking up at night and kick Justin with both of her feet telling him that he was on the baby and to get off of him! This is really weird considering not once did they have Sam sleep in bed with them! Funny. On Saturday we went to one of the couples’ baby’s 1-yr-old birthday party at the base beach. We have a while before we hit that mark!! We went and saw “Nacho Libre” – wow that movie is dumb, but funny – but something I think I would only be interested in seeing once.
On Thursday Bryan starts what’s called the Exercise. They have to wear like their chem. suits around and stuff and have to work 12-hr days for a week, and have to work the weekend too. It’s to prepare them for being deployed and stuff I guess. Interesting. I don’t know what he’s going to do for 12 hours! When we got here in May they were just barely finishing one up, so this is Bryan’s first one.
Well, we will be submitting Bryan’s officer packet in December. We hope he will have the officer test taken before the baby comes, and his upgrade-training tests completed by the first of November. And he’ll need to start talking to his Commander to start building a relationship there because he’ll need a letter of recommendation from them. This is a big deal and will be a lot of work, and a lot of paying attention to detail so that this packet is perfect. The packets are accepted from the 6th to the 20th of December and the board meets January 23rd. And around February 23rd we find out who they selected. Crazy. I feel confident in Bryan and his achievements thus far in his life. I think if everything is submitted correctly and it’s all well-done and well-said and everything has been included, then they would be crazy not to take him. Sure he’s lacking experience in the Air Force seeing as he hasn’t been in very long, but if that was really something they looked down on, then they wouldn’t have made a requirement that one has to be in a year enlisted before applying for a commission; they would have made it 2 or 3 yrs if that was the case. Plus, over all others who are coming in from ROTC and just applying for Officer Training School straight from the civilian world, Bryan already knows what the Air Force is like, he has already shown a willingness to be a part of it even though his main goal is to fly, he has already proven himself in that aspect – that he can handle being here. He has already proven that he can handle a lot of things at once without copping out – 3 of his school semesters were while he was in the Air Force-while he was studying and will soon excel on the officer test, while he was completing his training. He has proven that he is motivated – putting himself through school - and not just through any school program, but a flight program that involves extremely high costs. Not only that but he was almost always working at the same time, yet still will end with a 3.7 GPA – starting college for the first time in 2004, and completing it in 2006. They are looking for leaders? – Bryan has always been in student government, always been a leader in school – he served a 2-year mission voluntarily – he was an Honor Graduate in Basic Training - he was a red rope in Tech School, the highest student leadership one can attain there: where you are first selected from many applications to be a green rope student leader, then from among the green ropes several are later selected to be yellow ropes and to take on more responsibility, then just a couple are selected by the Military Training Leader to become a red rope and lead them all. What more could Bryan really show this board? They wouldn’t have to be worried if he could handle the Air Force, they wouldn’t have to worry that he couldn’t handle the program (seeing as he flew 260 hours in just over a year and completed all the training with awesome grades!); they wouldn’t have to worry that he wasn’t well-rounded or not a good leader. It all just makes sense to us; we just hope it makes sense to them. We figure with all that he has going for him, if he’s not selected, then we’ll submit another packet when they take them again end of next May, and we’ll keep submitting and keep submitting, and if he’s not selected, then it must not be meant to be. And that will be disappointing but okay, and we will finish our 4 yrs or so and go into the airlines! But, I feel good about this - things have gone so right for us thus far in the Air Force, so we must be meant to be here, and I think that he will be selected in February if we are well prepared.
So now that I’ve gone on and on about how awesome I think my husband is and how qualified I think he is, I suppose I can move on to other things. Can you tell this is a big deal to us! A goal he’s had all his life – is coming very soon!
He was assigned to AEF (I think it stands for Air Expeditionary Force?) 5, which their time to be on-call to be deployed is January-April. They say everyone is being deployed these days, but his supervisors don’t think they’ll be going anywhere. BUT, the thing is, since we are submitting that officer packet in December, even if his whole shop went, he wouldn’t, because his status will be changed so that he can’t get any assignments while waiting to hear back from the board.
So last week Bryan had Thursday off. They each got to choose a day off because they were so not busy. He’s worked a lot of 4-day weeks! But I guess they also did that because of the exercise starting this week and the long hours they were gonna have.
Okay so I’m gonna send this and then I’ll send off an email with a bunch of pictures – for real this time. I know I said that last week. I forgot to take the camera with me on Sunday to take pictures of off base after church and around the base on our way home, so we’ll have to send that next time. But we have a few pictures of moi and my huge belly (hope they’re not too graphic for you), from a few weeks ago and before. And I just took a bunch of pictures of our place for you to see. You’ll see the front of our place – we are the bottom right unit, and also the view from the building’s front door. Our car is the gray SUV (4-runner/Surf). And then you’ll see what it looks like when you walk into the building and the hallway in between the units – the doors that you see are the doors to our storage units, and the doors to the apartments are on the sides. You’ll see what it looks like when we look out our back sliding doors at our backyard and a little further. And then in the baby’s room we still haven’t put up trim below the stripes that we painted, and our suitcases are in the closet until they finish the other storage units that they’re building for everybody outside. We still need to put up our curtains above our sliding doors and I’m still working on Bryan to get curtains for the 2 kitchen windows, and we have yet to buy some for the baby room. And you can see our hotel-like ones in our bedroom (we just got those last week and they help keep that early-morning light out, and the heat!). We still need to order some pictures to put above our bed so it’s not so empty up there. And as you can see we only sleep with sheets (and Bryan has a little blanket) cuz it’s too hot (in case you didn’t notice the fans everywhere in the pictures). And I just don’t know what to put above our kitchen table on that wall, and can you see the highchair we have set up in there?! (We put it together so that when everyone came to our place for dinner one of the kids could use it. Plus we put our leaf in our table for that and just left it in). And then when I’m in the maroon shirt that’s when we took a walk down to the base beach, although you probably can’t tell since it’s almost dark. And Bryan took some pictures for when we went to the real beach (the ocean) a few weekends ago. And the ones when I’m in the green shirt were when we were still in the hotel. And the ones of us together and of a lot of side shots of me in the tan shirt with stripes, were at the beginning of August, and Bryan pulled the butt of my pants way out and thought it was hilarious cuz they’re HUGE pants. And then the one of my bare belly that really shows you how MASSIVE it is, that maybe I shouldn’t have sent, was just last week. Maybe I’ll send the frontal view as well, but that really is scary. It shows that nasty line you get down the middle of your belly. And by the way, my belly button is pretty much nonexistent now even though I normally have an unusually deep belly button. So those pictures were taken after I had gone on a walk with another pregnant girl near here. Ok, I think I got them all covered. A little glimpse into our life. They’re not the best quality – cuz we don’t have our camera on the highest setting, but after we get these ones developed when it’s full, we’ll switch it!
Hope you enjoyed my journal entry this week (that’s pretty much what it is!) – I know it’s long!
Love, Julie, Bryan, Brock Blumenkrantz
I posted some of the pictures - the rest can be viewed by clicking on this link: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2t7pqtrs.7rnxnjag&x=0&y=p3pnq8&localeid=en_US and then clicking on the picture to start the slideshow.
I explained these in the letter, but I added a few others of a Buddhist temple and a Samurai house and cemetary that we saw on tours when we first got here. And of us when Bryan's mom did us a favor and got us an ultrasound before we left the states. And a few of the fireworks (coming out of the water) at the Lake Towada festival we went to in July. And um, when I made waffles for dinner and I was on my last batch and just wanted to use the rest of the batter and made a mess!
Man it is HOT. We hit 96 degrees last Thursday – with the nasty humidity here need I remind you; talk about feeling like Houston!! *JENNI – I know how you feel about the weather there – you really can feel the sweat dripping down your back and it’s so disgusting and you can’t do anything about it! (Except we could escape it there, with our apartment always set at like 65 degrees!) I can’t believe I didn’t complain more about it than I did, when I was there. Our arms were always glistening – GROSS.* But it is time to complain more about it here. Our bathroom always has a “damp” smell to it. The back of our toilet is always condensating (not really a word) and dripping onto the floor. Our towels have to be replaced almost every day because they never dry!! Everything in the house kind of feels “moist” sometimes. And don’t buy a lot of boxes of cereal at one time because they won’t stay good! Blah blah blah. But I think I always just feel hotter than everyone else. I don’t know – must have something to do with this mysterious huge lump that I have on my front side. Never feel like doing a lot of physical stuff cuz sometimes it’s just so suffocating. Sucks to have to carry a fan with you wherever you go in the house (because in case you all don’t remember – WE DON’T HAVE A/C).
Once September hits it’s gonna feel like this baby thing is so close. I can’t believe it sometimes. Most of the time I just don’t feel ready! The feeling changes every day. Today I feel excited. I guess I’m always excited, just some days more than others, and some days it’s accompanied by other feelings as well! But I’m excited too about getting back to feeling normal. Although people have told me how they feel after having a baby and it doesn’t always sound normal! No, but, like my stomach. I feel sick a lot, but I know it also goes hand in hand with this heat. I am glad that the baby is coming in October (the 12th) after all the heat is gone. You think I’d want to have him now so that I don’t feel as hot, but it seems like it would be so hot if you always had this little warm body that you’re holding! I had a bunch of weird baby dreams last night, but I had a girl. I’ll be 33 wks tomorrow. I have been pretty consistent with the whole gaining a pound a week, for the last 6 weeks! I’ve gained 13 pounds since before I was pregnant, but if you count the 7 that I lost at the beginning of the pregnancy then it’s 20. But yeah, let’s face it; I was pretty chubby before I got pregnant so I was hoping to gain as little as possible because I already had all the baby could need!! So I have a lot to lose after the baby is born! The girl I lived with while Bryan was at tech school, her baby is just over 3 mos old, and she’s already lost 54 pounds!! (Jessica I hope you don’t mind me sharing that!) I have been having some painful “tightenings” of my lower stomach, which yesterday the doctor said were contractions. She said to be careful not to get dehydrated because that will bring them on and I’m just too early to be having the baby quite yet! It is really crazy that I could have the baby in 3 weeks and it really would be ok. Especially in 4 weeks, then it really would be considered ok and not that big of a deal! That’s so soon!!!
I pulled another retardo yesterday. I was opening the door of the pantry to throw something away and put my foot right in the way of the opening door – so when I yanked open the door I ripped off my toenail. Eeesh it hurt. Then I didn’t realize it was bleeding so I had to clean blood off the carpet too. Yuck. What a dummy!
Bryan finished his summer semester last Monday. He got 2 A’s and 2 A-‘s. In one of his classes he needed 385.4 points to get an A, and he got 385. !!!! Sheesh. So now the Fall semester starts tomorrow. His last 4 classes – YAY!! Advanced Aerodynamics, High Altitude Navigation Management, his last English, and his class for his research paper that he has to write for his Bachelor’s. I am also taking 2 classes and I’m not excited. The books are over $100 each, and we didn’t get our usual pell grants this year cuz we made too much money last year! Dang.
We went to dinner on Sunday at Liz and Justin’s house, with a bunch of others. I’m glad those dinners happen often here – it’s really fun. Liz was telling us how after she had the baby she would keep waking up at night and kick Justin with both of her feet telling him that he was on the baby and to get off of him! This is really weird considering not once did they have Sam sleep in bed with them! Funny. On Saturday we went to one of the couples’ baby’s 1-yr-old birthday party at the base beach. We have a while before we hit that mark!! We went and saw “Nacho Libre” – wow that movie is dumb, but funny – but something I think I would only be interested in seeing once.
On Thursday Bryan starts what’s called the Exercise. They have to wear like their chem. suits around and stuff and have to work 12-hr days for a week, and have to work the weekend too. It’s to prepare them for being deployed and stuff I guess. Interesting. I don’t know what he’s going to do for 12 hours! When we got here in May they were just barely finishing one up, so this is Bryan’s first one.
Well, we will be submitting Bryan’s officer packet in December. We hope he will have the officer test taken before the baby comes, and his upgrade-training tests completed by the first of November. And he’ll need to start talking to his Commander to start building a relationship there because he’ll need a letter of recommendation from them. This is a big deal and will be a lot of work, and a lot of paying attention to detail so that this packet is perfect. The packets are accepted from the 6th to the 20th of December and the board meets January 23rd. And around February 23rd we find out who they selected. Crazy. I feel confident in Bryan and his achievements thus far in his life. I think if everything is submitted correctly and it’s all well-done and well-said and everything has been included, then they would be crazy not to take him. Sure he’s lacking experience in the Air Force seeing as he hasn’t been in very long, but if that was really something they looked down on, then they wouldn’t have made a requirement that one has to be in a year enlisted before applying for a commission; they would have made it 2 or 3 yrs if that was the case. Plus, over all others who are coming in from ROTC and just applying for Officer Training School straight from the civilian world, Bryan already knows what the Air Force is like, he has already shown a willingness to be a part of it even though his main goal is to fly, he has already proven himself in that aspect – that he can handle being here. He has already proven that he can handle a lot of things at once without copping out – 3 of his school semesters were while he was in the Air Force-while he was studying and will soon excel on the officer test, while he was completing his training. He has proven that he is motivated – putting himself through school - and not just through any school program, but a flight program that involves extremely high costs. Not only that but he was almost always working at the same time, yet still will end with a 3.7 GPA – starting college for the first time in 2004, and completing it in 2006. They are looking for leaders? – Bryan has always been in student government, always been a leader in school – he served a 2-year mission voluntarily – he was an Honor Graduate in Basic Training - he was a red rope in Tech School, the highest student leadership one can attain there: where you are first selected from many applications to be a green rope student leader, then from among the green ropes several are later selected to be yellow ropes and to take on more responsibility, then just a couple are selected by the Military Training Leader to become a red rope and lead them all. What more could Bryan really show this board? They wouldn’t have to be worried if he could handle the Air Force, they wouldn’t have to worry that he couldn’t handle the program (seeing as he flew 260 hours in just over a year and completed all the training with awesome grades!); they wouldn’t have to worry that he wasn’t well-rounded or not a good leader. It all just makes sense to us; we just hope it makes sense to them. We figure with all that he has going for him, if he’s not selected, then we’ll submit another packet when they take them again end of next May, and we’ll keep submitting and keep submitting, and if he’s not selected, then it must not be meant to be. And that will be disappointing but okay, and we will finish our 4 yrs or so and go into the airlines! But, I feel good about this - things have gone so right for us thus far in the Air Force, so we must be meant to be here, and I think that he will be selected in February if we are well prepared.
So now that I’ve gone on and on about how awesome I think my husband is and how qualified I think he is, I suppose I can move on to other things. Can you tell this is a big deal to us! A goal he’s had all his life – is coming very soon!
He was assigned to AEF (I think it stands for Air Expeditionary Force?) 5, which their time to be on-call to be deployed is January-April. They say everyone is being deployed these days, but his supervisors don’t think they’ll be going anywhere. BUT, the thing is, since we are submitting that officer packet in December, even if his whole shop went, he wouldn’t, because his status will be changed so that he can’t get any assignments while waiting to hear back from the board.
So last week Bryan had Thursday off. They each got to choose a day off because they were so not busy. He’s worked a lot of 4-day weeks! But I guess they also did that because of the exercise starting this week and the long hours they were gonna have.
Okay so I’m gonna send this and then I’ll send off an email with a bunch of pictures – for real this time. I know I said that last week. I forgot to take the camera with me on Sunday to take pictures of off base after church and around the base on our way home, so we’ll have to send that next time. But we have a few pictures of moi and my huge belly (hope they’re not too graphic for you), from a few weeks ago and before. And I just took a bunch of pictures of our place for you to see. You’ll see the front of our place – we are the bottom right unit, and also the view from the building’s front door. Our car is the gray SUV (4-runner/Surf). And then you’ll see what it looks like when you walk into the building and the hallway in between the units – the doors that you see are the doors to our storage units, and the doors to the apartments are on the sides. You’ll see what it looks like when we look out our back sliding doors at our backyard and a little further. And then in the baby’s room we still haven’t put up trim below the stripes that we painted, and our suitcases are in the closet until they finish the other storage units that they’re building for everybody outside. We still need to put up our curtains above our sliding doors and I’m still working on Bryan to get curtains for the 2 kitchen windows, and we have yet to buy some for the baby room. And you can see our hotel-like ones in our bedroom (we just got those last week and they help keep that early-morning light out, and the heat!). We still need to order some pictures to put above our bed so it’s not so empty up there. And as you can see we only sleep with sheets (and Bryan has a little blanket) cuz it’s too hot (in case you didn’t notice the fans everywhere in the pictures). And I just don’t know what to put above our kitchen table on that wall, and can you see the highchair we have set up in there?! (We put it together so that when everyone came to our place for dinner one of the kids could use it. Plus we put our leaf in our table for that and just left it in). And then when I’m in the maroon shirt that’s when we took a walk down to the base beach, although you probably can’t tell since it’s almost dark. And Bryan took some pictures for when we went to the real beach (the ocean) a few weekends ago. And the ones when I’m in the green shirt were when we were still in the hotel. And the ones of us together and of a lot of side shots of me in the tan shirt with stripes, were at the beginning of August, and Bryan pulled the butt of my pants way out and thought it was hilarious cuz they’re HUGE pants. And then the one of my bare belly that really shows you how MASSIVE it is, that maybe I shouldn’t have sent, was just last week. Maybe I’ll send the frontal view as well, but that really is scary. It shows that nasty line you get down the middle of your belly. And by the way, my belly button is pretty much nonexistent now even though I normally have an unusually deep belly button. So those pictures were taken after I had gone on a walk with another pregnant girl near here. Ok, I think I got them all covered. A little glimpse into our life. They’re not the best quality – cuz we don’t have our camera on the highest setting, but after we get these ones developed when it’s full, we’ll switch it!
Hope you enjoyed my journal entry this week (that’s pretty much what it is!) – I know it’s long!
Love, Julie, Bryan, Brock Blumenkrantz
I posted some of the pictures - the rest can be viewed by clicking on this link: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2t7pqtrs.7rnxnjag&x=0&y=p3pnq8&localeid=en_US and then clicking on the picture to start the slideshow.
I explained these in the letter, but I added a few others of a Buddhist temple and a Samurai house and cemetary that we saw on tours when we first got here. And of us when Bryan's mom did us a favor and got us an ultrasound before we left the states. And a few of the fireworks (coming out of the water) at the Lake Towada festival we went to in July. And um, when I made waffles for dinner and I was on my last batch and just wanted to use the rest of the batter and made a mess!
Pregnant belly pics
+-+Aug+8,+2006.JPG)
8/8 and 8/14/06 (due date was 10/12)
Bare belly shots are scary!...almost...inappropriate?
Don't make fun of the walking outfit! bleh
Our home in Misawa, Japan (on the base)
-What the front of our fourplex looks like. Not anything too exciting eh?!
-Looking out from the front of the 4-plex - that's our old gray 4runner (surf).
-Good 'ol nameplates on the building.
-The hallway in between the units - we're on the right side - the front door's on the right wall.
...more of our home...
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-Walking in the front door.
-Our living room.
-Our living room from the other view. Notice all the fans??!
-View into the backyard from living room.
...and finally, more of our home
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-Master bedroom and the unfinished 2nd bedroom - we weren't going for a mint green!
Monday, August 14, 2006
8/14/06 - 8th Letter
8th letter
Mon. 8/14/06
It’s me again. We are enjoying our new place and all has been put away. We just need to put up some curtains and go to the store to find others for the bedrooms and kitchen. And we just need a few more pictures. We also found a decent baby swing on the curb (once a week people put their big things on the curb for the garbage peeps to pick up in the morning). Up here in the North Area that happens on Tuesday nights and there are a lot of people who make quite a habit out of driving around and checking out the goods on the curbs to see if there’s anything they want. Our friends from the plane picked up quite a nice entertainment center!
Last night we had 4 couples over for dinner. We invited 7 but 3 of them couldn’t come. They all have one kid except for one of the couples. They all kept commenting on how comfortable our couches were and grumbling how cruddy theirs were. --And mom, they thought it pretty amazing the scrapbooks I have that you put together for me as I was growing up. And then I told them how you did that for each of your 6 kids!-- But when everyone around you has their kid you definitely feel like you should have one too! But of course that will be solved in 2 months! I think the other couple who don’t have a kid, nor are they pregnant, definitely feel out of place sometimes.
Bryan spoke in church yesterday too, on the 1st Article of Faith. He did a great job. He is amazing how he handles all the things he needs to do – he makes it seem like he barely has anything to do, and so never seems to be stressed out. He was complaining yesterday how there is one kid in his class who just won’t keep his mouth shut – he was frustrated that he had to stop the class completely to deal with this kid. We talked about ways he could handle it and he’s going to do like a game board where as a group they earn points to work towards the ultimate goal of a party, but along the way can earn treats for some of the Sundays too. So that way there will be some peer pressure on the kid to keep quiet. The mom of one of the kids in his class told me that her kid said he really liked Bryan.
Saturday night we were getting ready to go to bed and I was reading to Bryan and felt fine and the next second I had to stop because I had to go to the bathroom to throw up! Very weird. It’s so disgusting and I thought I was done with that!! I can’t believe how much my feet have hurt during this pregnancy though. Honestly, who could think that feet could hurt so much so often! Bryan has been really nice to rub them for me on the nights where it’s really bad; otherwise they still hurt when I get up in the morning!
2 Saturdays ago we went to the beach in Hachinohe, about 45 min from here, where you’re safer from the riptides. It was cool and really pretty. I’ll attach some pictures of it. We followed Bryan’s supervisor’s family (once again) and they brought with them the new guy in test cell, Nate.
On Friday I went to a luncheon with 6 other girls at Tiffany’s house and that was really fun. Girls are so funny away from their husbands! I made peanut butter candy kiss cookies and dang were they good!! Although I had to substitute a Hershey’s bar for the candy kisses because all we had in the commissary was dark chocolate or peanut butter kisses – no milk chocolate! Sheesh, you just can’t go to the store and get what you need here sometimes! Last night Tiffany told us that Friday night they were in their living room and a black man walked right into their house - - - wearing nothing but a wife beater!!! Tiffany said they all just stared for a second in shock, then she covered her eyes, and finally the silence was broken by Josh (her husband) telling him, “You’re in the wrong house dude.” The guy was obviously very drunk and he stumbled out; apparently another one of their neighbor’s “friends.” They said she has a lot of them. Later Josh walked out of his front door, and stepped in remains the guy had left behind on their front porch, in his bare feet – GROSS.
So I’ll be 32 wks on Wednesday. Our branch president, who is also one of the 2 pediatricians here on base, told me as long as I have the baby after 2 more weeks they won’t have to ship me out of here. They don’t handle those kinds of high-risk deliveries here. I’m humongous and I’ll have to attach some of those pictures too. I’m not exactly looking forward to the next 2 months because those have obviously got to be the worst belly-size-wise. October 12th is rapidly approaching and sometimes I think, I’m just not ready!! But I haven’t been feeling well a lot of the mornings, and I feel very drained a lot of the time. I’ll be excited when the bump is out of my belly and in my hands, and I can bend forward again!
Going back to how awesome Bryan’s job is – he was sent home last Wednesday after only being there a half hour because there was nothing to do! I guess they haven’t had an engine for 2 weeks! Bryan said he overheard his supervisor talking to another guy in test cell about who they would get rid of if asked to shorten the crew in test cell. And the guy said, “Blue (what they call Bryan), because he is the new guy.” And his supervisor said that that would be a mistake. So that’s good! Apparently he thinks highly of Bryan! Good to know.
The ankle/shin that I fell on 2 months ago still has not healed! Hopefully after I have the baby it will go back to normal.
Anyway, I think I’m done now. I’ll attach some pictures, but we keep forgetting to take pictures of the base and of around the base – we keep forgetting to take the camera with us in the car when we’re just running errands. So we’ll do that this week and I’ll attach them in the next letter! But we are very happy and doing well! Just can’t wait for this humidity/heat to leave us – it really wouldn’t be bad at all if we could just escape it once we went in our house!-BECAUSE WE HAVE NO AIR CONDITIONING HERE!! When we say we want winter to come people say we won’t be saying that when we have to shovel every single morning!
Well thanks to those of you who email us updates on yourselves as well – it’s good to hear from you! Hope everyone is good and we’ll talk to you later.
JULIE AND BRYAN AND MAYBE-SOONER-THAN-LATER BROCK BLUMENKRANTZ
Mon. 8/14/06
It’s me again. We are enjoying our new place and all has been put away. We just need to put up some curtains and go to the store to find others for the bedrooms and kitchen. And we just need a few more pictures. We also found a decent baby swing on the curb (once a week people put their big things on the curb for the garbage peeps to pick up in the morning). Up here in the North Area that happens on Tuesday nights and there are a lot of people who make quite a habit out of driving around and checking out the goods on the curbs to see if there’s anything they want. Our friends from the plane picked up quite a nice entertainment center!
Last night we had 4 couples over for dinner. We invited 7 but 3 of them couldn’t come. They all have one kid except for one of the couples. They all kept commenting on how comfortable our couches were and grumbling how cruddy theirs were. --And mom, they thought it pretty amazing the scrapbooks I have that you put together for me as I was growing up. And then I told them how you did that for each of your 6 kids!-- But when everyone around you has their kid you definitely feel like you should have one too! But of course that will be solved in 2 months! I think the other couple who don’t have a kid, nor are they pregnant, definitely feel out of place sometimes.
Bryan spoke in church yesterday too, on the 1st Article of Faith. He did a great job. He is amazing how he handles all the things he needs to do – he makes it seem like he barely has anything to do, and so never seems to be stressed out. He was complaining yesterday how there is one kid in his class who just won’t keep his mouth shut – he was frustrated that he had to stop the class completely to deal with this kid. We talked about ways he could handle it and he’s going to do like a game board where as a group they earn points to work towards the ultimate goal of a party, but along the way can earn treats for some of the Sundays too. So that way there will be some peer pressure on the kid to keep quiet. The mom of one of the kids in his class told me that her kid said he really liked Bryan.
Saturday night we were getting ready to go to bed and I was reading to Bryan and felt fine and the next second I had to stop because I had to go to the bathroom to throw up! Very weird. It’s so disgusting and I thought I was done with that!! I can’t believe how much my feet have hurt during this pregnancy though. Honestly, who could think that feet could hurt so much so often! Bryan has been really nice to rub them for me on the nights where it’s really bad; otherwise they still hurt when I get up in the morning!
2 Saturdays ago we went to the beach in Hachinohe, about 45 min from here, where you’re safer from the riptides. It was cool and really pretty. I’ll attach some pictures of it. We followed Bryan’s supervisor’s family (once again) and they brought with them the new guy in test cell, Nate.
On Friday I went to a luncheon with 6 other girls at Tiffany’s house and that was really fun. Girls are so funny away from their husbands! I made peanut butter candy kiss cookies and dang were they good!! Although I had to substitute a Hershey’s bar for the candy kisses because all we had in the commissary was dark chocolate or peanut butter kisses – no milk chocolate! Sheesh, you just can’t go to the store and get what you need here sometimes! Last night Tiffany told us that Friday night they were in their living room and a black man walked right into their house - - - wearing nothing but a wife beater!!! Tiffany said they all just stared for a second in shock, then she covered her eyes, and finally the silence was broken by Josh (her husband) telling him, “You’re in the wrong house dude.” The guy was obviously very drunk and he stumbled out; apparently another one of their neighbor’s “friends.” They said she has a lot of them. Later Josh walked out of his front door, and stepped in remains the guy had left behind on their front porch, in his bare feet – GROSS.
So I’ll be 32 wks on Wednesday. Our branch president, who is also one of the 2 pediatricians here on base, told me as long as I have the baby after 2 more weeks they won’t have to ship me out of here. They don’t handle those kinds of high-risk deliveries here. I’m humongous and I’ll have to attach some of those pictures too. I’m not exactly looking forward to the next 2 months because those have obviously got to be the worst belly-size-wise. October 12th is rapidly approaching and sometimes I think, I’m just not ready!! But I haven’t been feeling well a lot of the mornings, and I feel very drained a lot of the time. I’ll be excited when the bump is out of my belly and in my hands, and I can bend forward again!
Going back to how awesome Bryan’s job is – he was sent home last Wednesday after only being there a half hour because there was nothing to do! I guess they haven’t had an engine for 2 weeks! Bryan said he overheard his supervisor talking to another guy in test cell about who they would get rid of if asked to shorten the crew in test cell. And the guy said, “Blue (what they call Bryan), because he is the new guy.” And his supervisor said that that would be a mistake. So that’s good! Apparently he thinks highly of Bryan! Good to know.
The ankle/shin that I fell on 2 months ago still has not healed! Hopefully after I have the baby it will go back to normal.
Anyway, I think I’m done now. I’ll attach some pictures, but we keep forgetting to take pictures of the base and of around the base – we keep forgetting to take the camera with us in the car when we’re just running errands. So we’ll do that this week and I’ll attach them in the next letter! But we are very happy and doing well! Just can’t wait for this humidity/heat to leave us – it really wouldn’t be bad at all if we could just escape it once we went in our house!-BECAUSE WE HAVE NO AIR CONDITIONING HERE!! When we say we want winter to come people say we won’t be saying that when we have to shovel every single morning!
Well thanks to those of you who email us updates on yourselves as well – it’s good to hear from you! Hope everyone is good and we’ll talk to you later.
JULIE AND BRYAN AND MAYBE-SOONER-THAN-LATER BROCK BLUMENKRANTZ
Saturday, July 29, 2006
7/29/06 - 7th Letter
7th letter
it's been awhile since i've written, not since july 5th. cuz the week following that letter it was so hot and stifling in the computer rooms that i just couldn't take it. now it was only in the low 80's, with of course humidity, but the hotel rooms heated up to way more than that. you could get no relief. the fans in our room were just blowing warm air so they didn't help at all, and you just felt so sticky that you felt you should be taking at least 4 showers a day. (because there's no a/c!!! even in the hotel rooms!!) blah. and then the week after that we moved, so i was no longer close to a computer room. and we didn't make trips down to the library, and i figured i'd just wait until we got our internet hooked up in our place. well it got hooked up tues. the 25th, and then it was down the day after that, and then blah blah blah, i've been busy. i'm still putting stuff away. i've never taken this much care in unpacking/organizing and it's taking me forever. i just figured here was the place that we'll live at the longest thus far and i want to put more time into it. and then since they'll pack us up when we leave here, when they unpack us elsewhere it will be so easy cuz everything will be where it's supposed to be cuz i'm an organizational FREAK. i swear i've become obsessive-compulsive about such things here. but besides all this -- it's so GREAT to be out of the hotel!!! 8 weeks about killed us. this place feels so big compared to it, that's for sure. it's so nice to have a washer and dryer readily available a few steps away - something we've been missing since december! it's so nice to not have to lug an all-too-heavy-cuz-i-waited-too-long laundry basket all the way down the hall and down a flight of stairs to get it done, so nice to have a dishwasher and to have enough dishes that you don't run out of them after every meal!, so nice to not have to try to lug all your groceries in one haul cuz it's way too long of a walk to make 2 trips - so nice to be on the bottom floor of this fourplex and a few steps away from our parking space! it's so nice to have all our things back (that we haven't had for 7 months!), to have way more comfy couches than those dang hotel ones or the cruddy wichita falls' apartment one - to have a computer with internet HALLELUJAH!!
7/30
sunday night. today was bryan's first day teaching his new class. his new calling as a valiant 9 teacher. 8 and 9 year olds. so i'm on my own for sunday school now. we just got back from eating dinner. it seems we've eaten dinner somewhere almost every sunday since we've been here. the last month or so it's been potlucks with mostly the same people, different couples hosting every time. they all have one kid. i just met another girl today who is also having a boy in october. but her due date is oct 31 so she's about 3 wks behind me. it's fun - we spend about 3 hrs every sunday with the group of them. two of them will be throwing a baby shower for me so that's really nice of them. the girl asked to do it for me before she even really knew my name. her name is melissa but she looks a lot like beth (michael johnson's wife). her husband also wants to be a pilot but is quite a bit behind bryan (who isn't? -- haha just kidding). he has 25 flight hours versus the 260 that bryan has - and they think THEY owe a lot of money!
bryan's job is freakin' awesome. one day he got tons of homework done, another he got tons of studying in doing practice tests on most of the sections for the officer test. another day he got home at 1:30, and that was the day he had physical training at 6am so he didn't even start work til 8 anyway. a few weeks ago they all went golfing one day. (speaking of, bryan said it was a decent course and it was only $10). on friday i was at the BX (base exchange) getting a few things cuz i took the car that day for an OB appt, and bryan was there with the guys he works with! -doing a little shopping after they had eaten at taco bell. nice. and then we talk to all these other people who work 12-hr days and others who have to frequently work 14-16 hrs, others who have to work graveyard shifts and their life consists of going to work and sleeping - out of the group we see on sundays bryan has got to by far have the easiest, or i guess i should say the best hrs, job. very relaxed! yeah they sit around and joke and throw footballs. we feel very blessed!! needless to say he likes work!
a few weeks ago they got another new guy fresh from tech school (nate -- single) that bryan knew from there. he has gotten a lot of his in-processing done way faster than bryan cuz bryan helped him and knew what he was doing! so they're both being trained right now by the same guy, even though bryan has been here way longer! so bryan did find out that he will be on days and the new guy will be the one who works swing shift. it would have been bryan otherwise, so bryan is relieved. he really wanted to work days.
the baby really likes my upper ribs on my right. no not my left, never my left, my right. he loves to get his feet in there. not so comfortable. sometimes you can see my stomach rolling. 30 weeks on wednesday!
oh, and last saturday we painted the baby room with big 10-inch vertical stripes that go down far enough to be level with the bottom of the window sill (dad remember that was your suggestion - to do vertical stripes instead of horizontal?) they are green but not exactly the green we were going for but it's ok. we had to mix acryllic paint that we got at our craft store with the free white paint that they have at self help. yeah we don't exactly have a home depot here where you can get the exact color you want. a little frustrating. now we're working on getting some trim so we can put up a chair rail where the paint ends. bryan is gonna get checked out at the wood shop i guess. so we thought we were unique doing the vertical stripes but today in tara and eric's house i saw they have vertical stripes from floor to ceiling in their baby's room, but their white stripes are bigger than their colored stripes, and then they have a smaller, second colored striped in the middle of the white. it's cool. but this was our first time around painting anything and i know what i want to do next time with the kids' room in our next place. i figured we'd be in the states and i'll have more access to more supplies!
a few weeks ago we also found out they are no longer paying for being proficient in the russian language. as of june 1st they did that. they said it's an abundant language - that they're paying too many people for it. weird. another guy we know said they also took his pay away for knowing german. same reason. bogus.
i will take pictures of our place once it's being done settled into so you guys can see it. we are gonna order some pictures off of ebay to put above our bed so it's not such a huge empty space since we don't have a headboard for our huge massive king bed (we are lovin' having it back!!). finally got to enjoy the present bryan gave me for christmas - a down/feather bed that you put on top of your mattress - it's nice!! although with that and with a larger than normal mattress cuz it's pillowtop, the sheet corners don't stay under.
we have 5 fans that are usually always all running, plus there's ceiling fans in both bedrooms and the dining room. but it feels much better in this place than the hotel - doesn't retain the heat like the room did. it's nice to have the new carpet and newly-painted walls. and i like things well lit so we have 5 lamps in our previously unlit living room. bryan thinks i went overboard there, (especially since one of them is a really big one with 5 heads on it!) but it's so nice. i hate feeling like the room is dark.
we bought a highchair from our neighbor for $15 - it's a nice one. and tara (the girl's house we ate at today) is going to give us her stroller/carrier combo - her girl is 12 mos now and they got a running stroller instead. i don't know what it looks like but i know it has the base for your car which we wanted. besides, it's free!
a few weekends ago we went to a festival at lake towada - a huge lake about 2 hrs away (a BEAUTIFUL but extremely small, winding roaded drive) - where they shot fireworks from the middle of the lake. it was cool, but not digital, so there were delays in between. but they had some where they threw the fireworks into the water from the back of a speeding boat and it exploded out of the water so that was really cool - something we haven't seen before. we brought the couple we met on the plane with us, and followed bryan's supervisor and the other guy he works with (who is now his trainer). when we got there we got joined by another couple - a guy who was in bryan's class from tech school - melson (that's right griffin). bryan got some nasty thing on a stick that looked like a fried piece of dough shaped like a small flattened ball, that he seemed to think tasted ok. then we made the rounds looking for soft-serve chocolate ice cream for moi - but since no one spoke english to be able to ask them if they had "chocolate," it wasn't until the 3rd place and the 3rd cone that we got it...and then it wasn't that great. the one i had in the mall here was great! better than the states. so we'll have to go back there (but it's 15 min away). sometimes you just want soft-serve, sheesh.
so the japanese movers had all our stuff unpacked in just over 2 hrs. well - not quite all unpacked - i didn't have them unpack our boxes cuz i had nowhere for them to put it - for the same reason why it's taking me so long to get it all done - cuz all our stuff got so dirty while being in storage, that i had to wash it all first. what a pain. most our stuff got here in good shape. our computer desk wasn't so lucky though. the right side has quite a crack in it. we kinda put it back straight and since our computer is on the left side there's not a lot of weight on it, so it will work. but it won't survive another move. plus our coffee table got a good-sized, wide, deep scratch on the top of it, and our end table got a long scratch in it as well. we picked up some wood-colored crayon things from a japanese store off base (homac) to make them not as noticeable. but we will see what we can get from a claim. but all our living room furniture fits better in this place than any other apartment we've had before. i really like this place. (just dumb that they put the heaters on the floor on your wall so it limits furniture placing in all the rooms). guess you all will just have to come visit to see it!
i have felt several earthquakes since the last time i've written. it's cool. 2 of them were while i was working at the tanning salon and it shook the table i was sitting at. bryan was there at the time so he got to enjoy it as well. i ended up working 35.5 hours there - but that's only $177.50 with the cruddy pay. oh well.
bryan is excited to finally have his own glove and cleats to play softball with. about a month ago they had a weekend tournament and played 3 games on friday and at least 10 i think on saturday. they ended up taking 2nd place once the last game ended at about midnight. bryan says he loves the game, but not THAT much.
i had more to say but can't remember it now, but i figured this is long enough already, so, another time. oh yeah, bryan has the day off again tomorrow!
love you all,
bryan, julie, and rib-kicker brock taylor blumenkrantz
it's been awhile since i've written, not since july 5th. cuz the week following that letter it was so hot and stifling in the computer rooms that i just couldn't take it. now it was only in the low 80's, with of course humidity, but the hotel rooms heated up to way more than that. you could get no relief. the fans in our room were just blowing warm air so they didn't help at all, and you just felt so sticky that you felt you should be taking at least 4 showers a day. (because there's no a/c!!! even in the hotel rooms!!) blah. and then the week after that we moved, so i was no longer close to a computer room. and we didn't make trips down to the library, and i figured i'd just wait until we got our internet hooked up in our place. well it got hooked up tues. the 25th, and then it was down the day after that, and then blah blah blah, i've been busy. i'm still putting stuff away. i've never taken this much care in unpacking/organizing and it's taking me forever. i just figured here was the place that we'll live at the longest thus far and i want to put more time into it. and then since they'll pack us up when we leave here, when they unpack us elsewhere it will be so easy cuz everything will be where it's supposed to be cuz i'm an organizational FREAK. i swear i've become obsessive-compulsive about such things here. but besides all this -- it's so GREAT to be out of the hotel!!! 8 weeks about killed us. this place feels so big compared to it, that's for sure. it's so nice to have a washer and dryer readily available a few steps away - something we've been missing since december! it's so nice to not have to lug an all-too-heavy-cuz-i-waited-too-long laundry basket all the way down the hall and down a flight of stairs to get it done, so nice to have a dishwasher and to have enough dishes that you don't run out of them after every meal!, so nice to not have to try to lug all your groceries in one haul cuz it's way too long of a walk to make 2 trips - so nice to be on the bottom floor of this fourplex and a few steps away from our parking space! it's so nice to have all our things back (that we haven't had for 7 months!), to have way more comfy couches than those dang hotel ones or the cruddy wichita falls' apartment one - to have a computer with internet HALLELUJAH!!
7/30
sunday night. today was bryan's first day teaching his new class. his new calling as a valiant 9 teacher. 8 and 9 year olds. so i'm on my own for sunday school now. we just got back from eating dinner. it seems we've eaten dinner somewhere almost every sunday since we've been here. the last month or so it's been potlucks with mostly the same people, different couples hosting every time. they all have one kid. i just met another girl today who is also having a boy in october. but her due date is oct 31 so she's about 3 wks behind me. it's fun - we spend about 3 hrs every sunday with the group of them. two of them will be throwing a baby shower for me so that's really nice of them. the girl asked to do it for me before she even really knew my name. her name is melissa but she looks a lot like beth (michael johnson's wife). her husband also wants to be a pilot but is quite a bit behind bryan (who isn't? -- haha just kidding). he has 25 flight hours versus the 260 that bryan has - and they think THEY owe a lot of money!
bryan's job is freakin' awesome. one day he got tons of homework done, another he got tons of studying in doing practice tests on most of the sections for the officer test. another day he got home at 1:30, and that was the day he had physical training at 6am so he didn't even start work til 8 anyway. a few weeks ago they all went golfing one day. (speaking of, bryan said it was a decent course and it was only $10). on friday i was at the BX (base exchange) getting a few things cuz i took the car that day for an OB appt, and bryan was there with the guys he works with! -doing a little shopping after they had eaten at taco bell. nice. and then we talk to all these other people who work 12-hr days and others who have to frequently work 14-16 hrs, others who have to work graveyard shifts and their life consists of going to work and sleeping - out of the group we see on sundays bryan has got to by far have the easiest, or i guess i should say the best hrs, job. very relaxed! yeah they sit around and joke and throw footballs. we feel very blessed!! needless to say he likes work!
a few weeks ago they got another new guy fresh from tech school (nate -- single) that bryan knew from there. he has gotten a lot of his in-processing done way faster than bryan cuz bryan helped him and knew what he was doing! so they're both being trained right now by the same guy, even though bryan has been here way longer! so bryan did find out that he will be on days and the new guy will be the one who works swing shift. it would have been bryan otherwise, so bryan is relieved. he really wanted to work days.
the baby really likes my upper ribs on my right. no not my left, never my left, my right. he loves to get his feet in there. not so comfortable. sometimes you can see my stomach rolling. 30 weeks on wednesday!
oh, and last saturday we painted the baby room with big 10-inch vertical stripes that go down far enough to be level with the bottom of the window sill (dad remember that was your suggestion - to do vertical stripes instead of horizontal?) they are green but not exactly the green we were going for but it's ok. we had to mix acryllic paint that we got at our craft store with the free white paint that they have at self help. yeah we don't exactly have a home depot here where you can get the exact color you want. a little frustrating. now we're working on getting some trim so we can put up a chair rail where the paint ends. bryan is gonna get checked out at the wood shop i guess. so we thought we were unique doing the vertical stripes but today in tara and eric's house i saw they have vertical stripes from floor to ceiling in their baby's room, but their white stripes are bigger than their colored stripes, and then they have a smaller, second colored striped in the middle of the white. it's cool. but this was our first time around painting anything and i know what i want to do next time with the kids' room in our next place. i figured we'd be in the states and i'll have more access to more supplies!
a few weeks ago we also found out they are no longer paying for being proficient in the russian language. as of june 1st they did that. they said it's an abundant language - that they're paying too many people for it. weird. another guy we know said they also took his pay away for knowing german. same reason. bogus.
i will take pictures of our place once it's being done settled into so you guys can see it. we are gonna order some pictures off of ebay to put above our bed so it's not such a huge empty space since we don't have a headboard for our huge massive king bed (we are lovin' having it back!!). finally got to enjoy the present bryan gave me for christmas - a down/feather bed that you put on top of your mattress - it's nice!! although with that and with a larger than normal mattress cuz it's pillowtop, the sheet corners don't stay under.
we have 5 fans that are usually always all running, plus there's ceiling fans in both bedrooms and the dining room. but it feels much better in this place than the hotel - doesn't retain the heat like the room did. it's nice to have the new carpet and newly-painted walls. and i like things well lit so we have 5 lamps in our previously unlit living room. bryan thinks i went overboard there, (especially since one of them is a really big one with 5 heads on it!) but it's so nice. i hate feeling like the room is dark.
we bought a highchair from our neighbor for $15 - it's a nice one. and tara (the girl's house we ate at today) is going to give us her stroller/carrier combo - her girl is 12 mos now and they got a running stroller instead. i don't know what it looks like but i know it has the base for your car which we wanted. besides, it's free!
a few weekends ago we went to a festival at lake towada - a huge lake about 2 hrs away (a BEAUTIFUL but extremely small, winding roaded drive) - where they shot fireworks from the middle of the lake. it was cool, but not digital, so there were delays in between. but they had some where they threw the fireworks into the water from the back of a speeding boat and it exploded out of the water so that was really cool - something we haven't seen before. we brought the couple we met on the plane with us, and followed bryan's supervisor and the other guy he works with (who is now his trainer). when we got there we got joined by another couple - a guy who was in bryan's class from tech school - melson (that's right griffin). bryan got some nasty thing on a stick that looked like a fried piece of dough shaped like a small flattened ball, that he seemed to think tasted ok. then we made the rounds looking for soft-serve chocolate ice cream for moi - but since no one spoke english to be able to ask them if they had "chocolate," it wasn't until the 3rd place and the 3rd cone that we got it...and then it wasn't that great. the one i had in the mall here was great! better than the states. so we'll have to go back there (but it's 15 min away). sometimes you just want soft-serve, sheesh.
so the japanese movers had all our stuff unpacked in just over 2 hrs. well - not quite all unpacked - i didn't have them unpack our boxes cuz i had nowhere for them to put it - for the same reason why it's taking me so long to get it all done - cuz all our stuff got so dirty while being in storage, that i had to wash it all first. what a pain. most our stuff got here in good shape. our computer desk wasn't so lucky though. the right side has quite a crack in it. we kinda put it back straight and since our computer is on the left side there's not a lot of weight on it, so it will work. but it won't survive another move. plus our coffee table got a good-sized, wide, deep scratch on the top of it, and our end table got a long scratch in it as well. we picked up some wood-colored crayon things from a japanese store off base (homac) to make them not as noticeable. but we will see what we can get from a claim. but all our living room furniture fits better in this place than any other apartment we've had before. i really like this place. (just dumb that they put the heaters on the floor on your wall so it limits furniture placing in all the rooms). guess you all will just have to come visit to see it!
i have felt several earthquakes since the last time i've written. it's cool. 2 of them were while i was working at the tanning salon and it shook the table i was sitting at. bryan was there at the time so he got to enjoy it as well. i ended up working 35.5 hours there - but that's only $177.50 with the cruddy pay. oh well.
bryan is excited to finally have his own glove and cleats to play softball with. about a month ago they had a weekend tournament and played 3 games on friday and at least 10 i think on saturday. they ended up taking 2nd place once the last game ended at about midnight. bryan says he loves the game, but not THAT much.
i had more to say but can't remember it now, but i figured this is long enough already, so, another time. oh yeah, bryan has the day off again tomorrow!
love you all,
bryan, julie, and rib-kicker brock taylor blumenkrantz
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